


Unexpected

by pontmercy44



Series: Parenthood [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dsyfunctional, F/M, Happy little family, Knocked up, Not, Tropes abound, i'm trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-08-28 19:21:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 62,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8459995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pontmercy44/pseuds/pontmercy44
Summary: What to expect when you're expecting the child of an rich, womanizing, alcoholic, unredeemable asshole? And what to do when the unexpected, improbable, irrational happens?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, trash muse. Good to see you again so soon.

The woman nursing a martini with her friends and throwing him glances across the bar was his type – tall, lithe but buxom, blonde. On the young side. Long hair, short skirt. She attracted his attention in the way that most women did – she got his languid, half-hearted attention.

Ben Solo leaned back in his chair, contemplating whether it was worth the effort to walk across the room and talk to the blonde. He’d only been at the nightclub for thirty minutes, the night was young, and he decided against it. If she was interested – and she seemed interested, judging from the way she kept looking at him– she’d come to him. He tipped his head back and took a long drink of his beer.

“Excuse me.” That had been fast.

Ben opened his eyes, surprised, but the long-legged blonde was still across the room. A thin brunette stood in front of him, twisting her hands in front of her. She had a determined set to her jaw that belied her nervous ticks. “Hello.”

“Hello?” Ben cocked his brow. “Do I know you?” He doubted it; she wasn’t the type of girl he’d normally approach in a bar. Or anywhere else, for that matter. She was underdressed, wearing flats and jeans instead of stilettos and a skirt. There wasn’t any makeup on her face, and he wondered, briefly why the bouncer had let her in. She wasn’t bad looking at all, but she stood out like a sore thumb in the space full of well-dressed professionals and professional flirts.

Her nervous smile faltered. “I was hoping you would. We’ve met before.”

***

_“Her? No.” Ben tipped back his drink, shaking his head vigorously. “Don’t insult me. I want a challenge.”_

_He was playing a game he only ever played when he was drunk, or, more specifically, when he was drunk with his Chief Financial Officer and the Director of the Board. Hux participated, but his record couldn’t rival Ben’s. Phasma took part when it pleased her. Tonight, what pleased her was lounging on the sleek white couches in the corner of the nightclub and pointing out girls. She perused the crowd, skipping over numerous lanky blondes and models before she extended her finger and pointed._

_“Her.”_

_“Brunette with A cups?” Ben twisted in his seat, and wrinkled his nose. Hux snorted into his vodka, but stayed silent._

_“She’s very pretty.” Phasma eyed the young woman. “In a girl-next-door kind of way. And she’s blown off six guys in the last hour.”_

_“Really.” Despite himself, Ben’s interest was piqued. He took another look. The girl was perched on a barstool wearing a black dress, tracing the rim of her glass. Unlike most of the girls in the venue, she wasn’t scanning the room for a potential hook-up, or, better yet, a rich bachelor. There was nothing particularly flashy about her, either – she wasn’t sitting and trying to garner attention, like a peacock, or prowling like a predator. She was alternately texting and rearranging her nearly-empty glass and cocktail napkin, lips pursed._

_The girl_ was _pretty, Ben conceded, and the fact that she’d turned down six other men in this, a bar frequented by wealthy, influential men, intrigued him._

_“You said you wanted a challenge.” Phasma wiggled her perfectly groomed brows. “Go on. Five-hundred says you can’t seal the deal.”_

_Ben saluted her, downed his drink, stole Hux’s, against the red-headed man’s half-hearted protests, and made his way across the room. The girl at the bar didn’t even look up when he took the stool next to hers, perching and swiveling to face her profile._

_“What are you drinking?” He leaned his elbow onto the marble bar top, easing it over towards her. As he invaded her space, she moved away, just slightly._

_“No.” She didn’t even turn to face him. She raised her glass, resolutely, and took a delicate sip. There was barely any liquid left in it._

_“You are drinking.” He pointed out, unhelpfully._

_“I meant no, you can’t buy me a drink.” She cocked her head towards him, and took another, very deliberate sip. He thought he saw a little smile curve the edge of her mouth as she lifted her glass to her lips._

_“I didn’t offer to buy you a drink. I asked what you were drinking.”_

_“It’s a gin and tonic.” Her eyes narrowed at him._

_Ben raised two of his fingers, catching the bartenders eye. “Gin and tonic.”_

_“I said you couldn’t buy me a drink.” Her voice lilted with a British accent, and he wondered if complimenting her accent would work – it was sexy, compensating at least a little for the flat chest. The scolding tone made the accent even more titillating, somehow._

_“Who said it’s for you?” He drained the rest of Hux’s vodka, and, when the bartender slid the gin and tonic to him with a little nod, he picked it up and took a sip. The girl watched him, unimpressed, her arms crossed over her chest._

_“You like gin and tonic?”_

_“I like whatever you like.” He took another sip, and asked, voice laced with innuendo, “What do you like?”_

_“I like being left alone.”_

_“No, you don’t.” He countered._

_“Oh, really.” Sarcasm dripped off the syllables._

_“Yeah.” He had a satisfying buzz, both from the alcohol he’d consumed, and from the thrill of pursuing something rather than having it thrown at him. Too many girls took one look at his expensive suits, expensive watch, expensive shoes, and gave him what he wanted. That was only gratifying to a point; he always felt like he hadn’t really_ earned _it. “If you did, you would have walked away by now. But you’re still sitting here.”_

_She looked at him for a long moment, and then asked, very seriously, “Does this work on girls? This whole… charming asshole thing?”_

_“Yes.” He answered bluntly and honestly. He wasn’t lying. “Did it work on you?”_

_“No.” She said no, but her requisite laughter said_ yes, it did _. Ben got off of his barstool, with some effort. The world spun a little, and then steadied._

_“I actually hate gin and tonics. Want to get out of here?”_

***

“I, ah....” Ben looked at the girl, blankly. She was looking at him as if she knew him, and something, _something_ about her face seemed familiar. Normally, he played along and made a quick escape if a past conquest spotted him, but this girl seemed far too sober and serious for that maneuver. And she didn’t _look_ like a past conquest. Hers was a pretty face, a young face, and he wondered, for a moment, if she was even of age to be in a nightclub.  “I don’t remember. Remind me.”

 ***

_She tasted like gin, and he really did hate gin, but her mouth was warm and soft. They fumbled together at his belt as he slammed the rooftop access door behind them. It was a hot night in late summer, and her humid breath burned against his neck as she kissed it, suckling a little purple mark onto it._

_Sinking ungracefully to his knees, Ben gripped her calves and traced her legs upwards, under the skirt of her dress. He found panties, soaked ones, and tugged them down to her ankles. Somehow, despite his intoxication, he had the dexterity to pull the panties off over her feet, one by one, as she balanced, bracing herself on his shoulders._

_When he stood, he dwarfed her again. He pushed her, roughly, against the closed door, half expecting her to fight him and pretend she didn’t want him to slam her against it. She didn’t. Her leg crept up around his waist, and he hoisted her up, with a grunt. They ground their bodies together, mouths open and catching clumsily on each other’s mouths._

_Her hands found his belt buckle again, and then the zipper of his pants. She took an agonizingly long time with it, and he growled with impatience, knocking her hand aside and yanking out his painfully swollen cock with one hand. Pre-cum dribbled onto his hand as he pumped his shaft up and down, twice. His erection was standing up straight against his abdomen, but once he had it in hand, he angled it down, and towards her._

_The girl let him, finding the hem of her dress and lifting it up to expose her sex. Her legs were open, stretched wide to accommodate the breadth of his body. He didn’t have a condom – those were in a drawer by his bed, so that they’d be easily accessible when he brought someone home – but he had her wrapped around him, spreading her legs for him, and he didn’t have the good sense to resist. He never had, when it came to bad decisions._

_Finding the warm cleft in between her legs, Ben nudged just the head of his cock into it, to make sure he was in the right spot. She sighed, and then squeaked when he unceremoniously pushed the rest of the way inside. He took the noise as a compliment and tried to sink in further, in a futile effort. She was wet and warm and tight – much tighter than he’d expected a quick fuck at a bar to be – and he wanted to disappear inside her completely. He thrust frantically, erratically, too drunk to be rhythmic or methodical, and her high-pitched squeaking noises became low, breathless moans._

_The lights of lower Manhattan twinkled around them. Ben could see people still bent over their office desks in nearby windows, and he wondered, with an indecent little thrill, if they could see him fucking this girl on the roof of a nightclub._

***

“We had a drink together. Here.” She gestured vaguely around the bar.

“I come here a lot.” Ben sipped his drink, and then set it down, bracing his elbows on his spread knees. He desperately wished Hux and Phasma weren’t running late – probably fucking, he acknowledged – so that he would have an excuse to end this painfully awkward conversation. “And I drink a lot. Anything more specific?”

She hesitated for a second, and then said, “Can we talk somewhere more private?”

***

_They got dressed without looking at each other. If it weren’t for the car horns and sirens and general rumble of city traffic, it would have been unbearably silent._

_He’d broken a few cardinal rules tonight – small breasts, no condom – so what was one more? “Can I have your number?”_

_She paused, halfway through fixing her hair, and seemed to consider it. Then, she said, flatly, “No.”_

_“Why not?” Ben wasn’t sure why he wanted it so much – the sex had been above average, but he never asked for numbers. One night stands were meant to be just that, one night. Asking for a woman’s phone number might give her the wrong idea – the idea that he might call her. He wouldn’t. He wasn’t interested in a relationship, and he especially wasn’t interested in a relationship with a woman who wanted to marry a Fortune 500 C.E.O._

_But this girl hadn’t asked what he did for a living. She’d barely given his watch or shoes a second glance. And she’d resisted him, albeit, not for long. He’d had to pursue_ her.

_He wanted this girl’s number._

_“Why not?” He repeated, obstinately._

_She walked towards the access door, calling back over her shoulder, “Because you’re an asshole.”_

_“But a charming asshole, right?” He yelled after her. Her laughter echoed in the stairwell as she disappeared._

_Ben turned back to the city, still smiling despite himself. He stayed on the roof until he was sober, and then went home to his penthouse in Tribeca, forgoing his driver and walking alone._

 ***

“Sure.” Ben stood up, awkwardly. He had half a mind to make an excuse and get the hell out of there, but she was looking at him beseechingly, almost desperately, and his deeply-buried better nature won out. “Uh, lead the way.”

The girl moved to the back of the nightclub, and through the unmarked door she shouldn’t know about. It was supposed to be an access stairwell for the staff and maintenance men only; Ben only knew about it because he knew the owner of the nightclub.

They were halfway up the stairs to the roof when he remembered, and stopped short. They’d done this before, gone up these steps, except then, they’d been stumbling a little, laughing louder than was necessary, and eventually, tugging at each other’s clothes.

“The roof.”

She turned, two steps ahead of him. Her face was level with his, like this. “That’s where we’re going.”

“We had sex on the roof.” He clarified.

“Yes.” She flushed. “You remember now.”

“It _was_ memorable.” Ben grinned wolfishly, leaning slightly towards her. She looked different - no dress, heels, makeup - but she was the same girl who'd fucked him on the roof. Knowing that instantly made her more attractive, in that moment. “So, when you said you wanted to go somewhere more private…”

A small hand planted itself firmly in the center of his chest, unequivocally cutting off his subtle advance. “To talk.”

“To talk.” He took a step back, and down, slightly off balance, and asked, not bothering to hide his disappointment and disdain, “Just talk?”

“Just talk.” He remembered this now; the way she played hard to get.

He waited for a second, his patience with whatever game this was wearing thin. “…about what?”

The girl worried her lower lip between her teeth. She rocked back and forth on her heels for a second, almost like a leaf in the wind, and then took a deep, fortifying breath. She stood up a little straighter, and raised her chin. “I’m pregnant.”


	2. Chapter 2

Rey wasn’t sure what she expected this man’s reaction to be – anger, disbelief, shock, maybe – but it certainly wasn’t this. He rocked back on his heels, raised his drink and took a thoughtful swallow, and then examined the top of his beer. He didn’t say anything. She stared at him.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

He looked up, as if remembering she was there. “What do you want me to say?”

Rey stared at him blankly. “I hadn’t thought that through.”

He nodded, slowly. “Are you going to terminate it?”

“ _It_?” She’d only been concretely aware of her pregnancy for two weeks, and most of that time had been spent crying, but the fact that _this_ was his reaction made something fierce and protective rear up in her.

“Yes, it.” He repeated himself, flatly.

“It’s not an _it_ , it’s a baby.” Her voice hitched.

The tall man raised and lowered his shoulders just slightly, as if he was shrugging. “If you’re going to have an abortion, I’d rather think of it as an it.” He took another step back from her, down to a lower step, and looked up at her appraisingly. “I can pay for the procedure. And for your trouble.”

“What…” Rey faltered. She’d be lying if she said the thought hadn’t crossed her mind, but it was an emotional, personal decision she’d agonized over for days. It had been her first instinct, and then the idea of it had been repulsive to her, and she’d alternated between those two mindsets, in agony. His brusque, businesslike tone, totally emotionless, made her stomach itself into knots. “What is _wrong_ with you?”  

When he didn’t answer, she suddenly knew, with utter clarity, the answer to that question she’d been grappling with since that fateful day, two weeks ago. She’d finally stopped trying to pretend that she hadn’t noticed the conspicuous absence of her period, and she’d bought a three-dollar pregnancy test at the pharmacy, furtively. She’d taken it in the match-box sized bathroom in her fifth-floor walkup in Harlem. It was positive. She’d known it would be, even before those two crossed lines appeared. What she hadn’t known, until now, was what she was going to _do_ about it. “I’m not having an abortion.”

“Of course you’re not.” The man exhaled through his nose, and then pinched the bridge of it, almost as if he was exasperated. “It’s your meal ticket.”

“ _Excuse me_?”

“Oh, come on.” The man crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his beer bottle under one arm. “You tracked me down to tell me the _happy news_. You don’t want an abortion, so this isn’t some sort of courtesy call to make sure I’m okay with it before you book the appointment. Obviously, you know who I am. You want money.””

“I have _no idea_ who you are, you arrogant _prick_.” Rey’s vision went slightly fuzzy with anger. “And I don’t want your money. I just thought you had a right to know.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, each totally distrusting the others motives, and then the man said, in a low voice, “I want a paternity test. Then I’ll know.”

“I’ll take one.” Rey told him, icily. “But I’ll spare you the suspense. You’re the father. I haven’t had sex with anyone else in the past three months.”

He looked at her as if he was assessing whether she was telling the truth, and then, out of the blue, he turned on his heel, took the empty beer bottle from under his arm, and threw it down the stairwell. It shattered a floor down. He was breathing hard, the muscles in his back contracting under his clothes.

When he finally turned back around, his veneer of calm had been replaced. He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, and pulled out a small, rectangular card.

“Call my secretary.” His voice rough as he handed her the business card. It was slim and black, with minimal details on it. The name, in gently raised print, was _Benjamin Solo_. “He’ll set up the appointment for the blood draw. When the results come back, he’ll contact you to work out all the paperwork.”

Rey stared at the card in her hand. _Paperwork_. She didn’t even know what that meant. She’d almost expected him to run in the other direction, to tell her he wanted nothing to do with her or the baby, even to demand a paternity test. But she hadn’t expected his cold, clinical tone and all the trappings of a business deal.

“Are we done here?” His voice brought her back to reality.

Rey drew her arm back, and slapped him across the face. He flinched, but didn’t retaliate. His hand rose to brush over the little mark she’d left on the corner of his mouth. “Now we are.”

***

Rey walked in circles around her studio apartment, measuring out the paces. One, two, three, four, five, six. Turn. Repeat. There was no room for a crib, she thought, dully, not to mention a changing table and a rocking chair and all the other things a baby should have. That, and there was no money in her bank account to buy those things.

_Obviously, you know who I am._

Well, she did now. She’d found him at the nightclub by sheer luck; her friend Poe was a bartender there, and when she described the man who had gotten her pregnant, Poe gave her a funny look and said, “He’s a regular.” Now, she had his business card, and his name, and she had a plethora of search engine results. Now, she could grudgingly admit she understood why he wanted a paternity test.

Legs shaking, she sunk down onto her futon. She took the business card off of the wooden crate she’d turned on its side for use as a side table, and fingered the edge of it. It was already well-frayed from being handled constantly since had given it to her.

When she dialed the number, a smooth, clipped male voice answered. “You’ve reached the office of Benjamin Solo, how may I direct your call?”

“This is Rey Kenobi.”

There was a pause, and then the secretary said, tactfully, “He’s not expecting a call from anyone by that name. Can I help you with anything?”

“He’s – he’s expecting my call. Well, he told me to call you. I’m – I need to set up an appointment.”

“With Mr. Solo?” The man’s voice crackled with amusement. “I’m afraid he’s booked until November.”

“Not with Mr. Solo.” The name felt funny on her tongue. “A… doctor’s appointment.”

“Ah, yes.” The man’s voice changed. “I understand. If you will go to the OBGYN intake desk at Lenox Hill Hospital, give them Mr. Solo’s name, and ask for Dr. Chowdary, she will see you directly. Mr. Solo asked that she fit you in today and expedite the laboratory results, so we should have an answer sometime tomorrow.” The secretary sounded crisp and discrete, as if he were discussing a stock purchase or his merger.

Rey blinked at the speed at which the appointment and testing had been arranged, and wondered, hopelessly, how handsomely Benjamin Solo had paid to expedite this process. That thought led to another – _had_ he paid for it? If he hadn’t, she realized, heart sinking, she would almost certainly be saddled with a bill she couldn’t pay. She wanted to ask the secretary about that, but she was too proud. Instead, she just said, softly, “He needs to give a blood sample, too.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve put it on his schedule. Is there anything else I can help you with?” There was a note of pity in the man’s aristocratic voice, and Rey wondered, suddenly, whether he’d dealt with other women Benjamin Solo had left in his wake.

“No, that’s all.” Her voice cracked, pitifully, and the secretary hesitated before hanging up, as if he felt sorry for her.

***

Rey walked to Lenox Hill Hospital – the thought of a looming hospital bill made her reticent to take a cab, even if she felt an overwhelming sense of fatigue and had a headache – crossing Central Park on her way. It was like crossing over into an entirely different world – she left Harlem, with its crowded, dirty streets, submerged into the greenery of the park, and emerged into the Upper East Side. She seemed to be surrounded by children, and nannies or middle aged women wearing hundred-dollar yoga pants, as she walked past stately brownstones and mansions. She avoided looking at the children, or their mothers.  

Lenox Hill rose high above the lower-rise mansions around it, brick and ugly. Rey lingered outside the front door for a moment, reluctant to go in, and then, Benjamin Solo almost walked straight into her. He was looking down, unrolling his cuffed sleeve over a band-aid on the crook of his elbow. They jumped apart, warily,  when their eyes met, and Rey wondered if she should say something.

Before she could, he gave her an inscrutable little nod, and then  brushed past her and ducked into the backseat of an idling black Mercedes.

***

The secretary called her back the next day, at eight in the evening. She was about to leave work, having cleaned out the pastry display case and set out cold-brew for the next day. She had a powerful urge to drink some, in an effort to stave off her fatigue, and she stared at it, longingly, as she hung up her barista apron. Her cell phone buzzed insistently as she locked the front door of the coffee shop. Walking down the block, she examined the unknown number on the screen of her outdated cellphone, bewildered as to who would be calling her so late.

“Miss Kenobi?”

“Who is this?”

 “This is Dopheld Mitaka.” There was a pause. “Mr. Solo’s secretary.”

“Oh.” She wondered if he was trapped up in an office, at this hour, still making phone calls and cleaning up Solo’s messes. That, and she wondered why he was calling _her_ at this hour.

“I was calling to inform you that the laboratory results are back.”

There was a nasty twist in her lower belly. She felt somewhat violated, as if he and Dr. Chowdary had gone behind her back. “I didn’t think they could release my records to anyone but me.”

Dopheld paused, and then said, delicately, “Well, you signed a release at the hospital allowing the results to be released to the father.”

“Oh.” She’d known, of course, that he was the father, but hearing someone else acknowledge it made it real. “Okay.” She croaked out, feeling irrational tears prick at her eyes. Benjamin Solo had seen the results, then, had seen the proof, and he hadn’t called her to apologize or to address the elephant in the room himself. He’d sent one of his corporate minions to do his dirty work.

“Mr. Solo’s lawyers have prepared some paperwork.” Dopheld paused, as if he could hear her crying. “If you’d like to make an appointment for tomorrow.”

“I thought I couldn’t get an appointment until November.” Rey joked, sniffling and wiping her nose, in an attempt at gallows humor. “By that point, I’ll be in my second trimester.”

Mitaka didn’t laugh. “Mr. Solo is a busy man, Miss Kenobi. But this is a matter which he’d like to resolve quickly.”

***

First Order Investments rose above Wall Street in a sleek, modern skyscraper. To get to the office suite on the top floor, she had to bypass three security guards, a secretary, and finally, Dopheld Mitaka himself. She felt like all of those people looked at her suspiciously as she passed.

She was ushered into a glass-enclosed conference room, and seated at the end of a long, polished table. An assistant murmured something about getting her something to drink, and disappeared, leaving her alone with a thick, stapled document on legal-length paper.

Rey picked up the document, and glanced out of the glass walls. There were two men in dark suits outside, talking in low voices. Lawyers. They were laughing about something now, so she turned her attention back to the document, scanning the first page.

She expected a document which detailed a sum of money, a nondisclosure agreement, and the legal cutting of ties between Benjamin Solo and her unborn child. She was ready to sign that document, even relieved. Her conscience was clear: she’d found him, told him she was pregnant, and given him the opportunity to be a decent human being. Now, she picked up the heavy ink pen laying on the table, and fingered it. She was ready to sign this document, and be done with Benjamin Solo. She traced the edges of the stapled document, wondering if she could sign it and bolt before the lawyers could even talk to her. Three words caught her eye, and suddenly, a wave of nausea hit her.

What Rey  _wasn’t_ prepared to sign was a joint custody agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two. They hate each other. They're procreating. It's great. 
> 
> P.S. Look at me, updating so fast. Must have something to do with all the amazing feedback! :) 
> 
> P.P.S. Yes, Ben is an asshole. Just as I like him.


	3. Chapter 3

Ben shook his glass of whiskey, gently. It was only eleven in the morning, but he needed it, to steel his nerves. Down the hallway, in his conference room, the girl was signing a lengthy agreement his attorneys had drafted up. He’d called them and asked for it before the results of the paternity test had even come back. He’d known, remembering the look in the girl’s eyes, what the results would be.

The girl had a name, now. Her name was Rey Kenobi, and he was effectively connecting himself to her for the next eighteen years and eight months.

He sipped his whiskey, and waited.

He could have cut ties. She probably would have accepted a large check and disappeared, quietly, into the dark, crowded city. He could have asked his lawyer to draft up papers that could make that happen, and he’d almost done it, in a cowardly moment. Something had stuck in this throat, though, and he’d found himself unable to speak.

He’d muttered an excuse to his lawyer, put him on hold, and rifled violently through his desk drawer, until he’d found the crinkled, faded, folded photograph. It had been taken by his mother. He’d been six years old, and he had still had the gangliness of boyhood; he hadn’t grown into his limbs or his features. His father’s arm was slung around his neck. They wore shit-eating grins, matching ones. It was the last picture he’d ever taken with his father. Most people would keep this kind of picture at their homes; he kept his at his office, spitefully. It was the closest he could come to telling his father, _look at what I have become. Look at what I’ve built. I never needed you._

He’d gotten back on the phone with his lawyer and asked him to draft a standard joint custody agreement. He had a nagging feeling, now, that the decision had been a mistake, made in the foolish hope that he could do better than his father had. He tipped his glass back again.

The door of his office opened violently, slamming against the wall, and Ben nearly spat out his drink.

Rey stalked into his office, clutching the joint custody agreement. She was red in the face, and there were deep circles under her eyes. Scrambling up from his leather office chair, Ben rounded his desk. She advanced on him, and smacked his chest with the document, then with the open palm of her other hand. It didn’t hurt, but he still swore, and snapped, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What is wrong with _me_?” She sputtered, raising her voice in both pitch and volume. She took another swing at him, and he ducked. “You wanted me to have an _abortion_ and now you’re asking me for _joint custody_?”

Ben bit back what he really wanted to say – _part of me would still prefer if you had an abortion_ – and grabbed her fist, intercepting her flailing blow. He held her fist still, encompassing it in his much larger hand and lowered it. “Stop it. Just stop it.”

She did, breathing hard. He bypassed her and shut his office door, with a click. He’d hoped to be discrete about this, but she’d blown that hope out of the water, now. He wouldn’t doubt if the two attorneys, all the secretaries, the other executives on the top floor, and even the janitor had heard her little outburst.

When the door was shut, he turned back to face her. He adopted the low, calm tone he took when he didn’t want an argument. “I’m not _asking_ you for joint custody. I’m _telling_ you that you can either agree to joint custody, or I can sue you for sole custody.”

Rey looked at him, incredulously. “You…you can’t do that.”

“Yes, I can.” He crossed to the room to her. “Why do you think I wanted a paternity test?”

Realization dawned on Rey’s face. He’d known, when he’d demanded the paternity test, that she assumed he didn’t believe her assertion that he was the father. He’d let her believe that, rather than reveal what the paternity test _really_ was – an ace in his hand. Now she knew. After a long moment, she swallowed hard. “I just wanted to do the right thing.” Her chin quivered. “I didn’t want you to – to…” She began to cry, softly, and Ben felt a pang of guilt deep in his gut.

“I would prefer to settle this out of court.” He smoothed his hair and tie, clearing his throat. “But when I say I’ll sue you, it’s not an empty threat.” There was a long silence, during which the girl composed herself, smoothing her hands over her jeans and tucking her hair behind her ears. She looked very young, but when she met his eyes again, she didn’t look defeated.

“No judge would give you sole custody.” She attempted bravado, but there was a tinge of nervousness in her voice.

Ben showed a few more of his cards. He stated the following as facts, not maliciously: “You’re a barista. You went to art school. You live in a studio apartment in Harlem. No support network, no family. No health insurance. No life insurance.”

Rey’s jaw flapped open. “How… how do you know that?”

“I always bargain from a place of strength. That is what has made me so successful.” He crossed his arms over his chest, and elaborated, “To answer your question more specifically, I hired a private investigator.”

“You… manipulative bastard.” She looked both wounded and angry.

“Yes.” He walked closer to her. Another strategy – intimidate her by invading her personal space. “And I’m also a control freak, anal retentative, and very rich. Do you really want to go to court with me?” Her lashes flickered, furiously, and he pressed a little bit further, pushing his advantage. “I have three attorneys. Do you even have the money to hire _an_ attorney?”

Tears pooled in her eyes, and she choked out one syllable. “No.”

“Then sign the papers.”

“I won’t.” Defiance flared up on her tearful face. “You think you can buy anything, or bully anyone into getting what you want, and it isn’t _fair_.”

“Life isn’t fair.” He didn’t mean to say it unkindly, but it came out more harshly than he’d intended. “The sooner you learn that, the better.”

 “Why are you doing this?” Her little fists balled up, like she was going to strike out again. “You could have just walked away.”

“You could have walked away, too.” His temper got the better of him for a moment. “You don’t get to tell me you’re pregnant just so you can say you did the right thing, and then act surprised when _I_ try to do the right thing.”

“This is doing the _right thing_?” Her cheeks flushed deep, angry red. “I thought you needed to know. I didn’t think you were such an asshole that you would rally a team of lawyers and secretaries and doctors and private investigators to make my life miserable for the next eighteen years.”

 “Believe it or not, this isn’t about you.” Ben went back to his desk, turning away from her and looking down at it. In the drawer was that picture. His fingers itched for it.  She didn’t speak for a long moment, and then he heard, in a soft, resigned voice,

“Can I have a few days to look at these papers?”

“It’s a standard joint custody agreement.” Ben turned around. “Alternating weeks, alternating holidays.”

“Weeks?” Rey looked ill. “A week at a time? You want a _baby_ for a _week_ at a time?”

“That baby is half mine.” Ben realized, as he said it, he’d never referred to the fetus as a baby before, either privately or to anyone else. It had been, for lack of a better word, an _it._ “And anyways, I’m being generous. I’m not going to cut you bare minimum child support checks. I’ll pay all of the expenses. And I only want half of the time.”

“You have to think about what’s best for the baby.” She gave him a look that said she couldn’t believe he was being so selfish. “This is a _person_ , not a –.”

“You think that it would be better for the baby to grow up, living barely above the poverty line, with a single, working mother and a father who he sees once a month if he’s lucky?” Ben cut her off.

The girl looked like she wanted to slap him again. “Actually, I do.”

“You’re an idiot, then.” He told her, brusquely. He found a fresh business card, and wrote on it with a fountain pen. “This is my personal number. Call me when you’re ready to sign the papers. You don’t need an appointment.”

“You aren’t going to make me go through your secretary again?” She asked, venomously.

“Considering the scene you made just now, no.” Ben raked a hand over his hair. She made a disparaging noise, and took the business card. As she turned and walked towards the door, she wrapped her arms around herself, forlornly.

“Rey.” She turned, reluctantly. The look on her face almost made him feel guilty. Almost. “I’m not a monster. I’m willing to negotiate with you if you will be reasonable.”

“Oh, go to hell.”

***

“You?” Coffee almost came out of Hux’s nose when he heard the news. “A _father_? You don’t even have a houseplant.” The redheaded man wiped his nose with the back of his hand, cleaning up the spilled coffee. “How are you supposed to keep a baby alive?”

Ben could have been honest and answered _I don’t know_ but he didn’t. He just shrugged. “My parents were fuck-ups, and I turned out fine. How hard could it be?”

Hux gave him an odd look. “Is that what this is about? Your parents?”

Ben wouldn’t admit it publicly, but Hux was one of his oldest friends. They jabbed each other endlessly, but he was the only person he’d watch hockey with, or drink scotch with. Hux _knew_ him. Still, he denied it. “No.”

“Right.” Hux wasn’t convinced. He crossed his legs, and leaned forward, thoughtfully. “So who’s the lucky lady?”

“She’s not a lady, she’s a – speak of the devil.” His pinging cell phone cut him off before he could say something rude. “That’s her calling.”

The girl caved faster that he’d thought she would, Ben thought, as he picked up his phone and examined it. It was an unknown number. He never gave out his personal number. She was one of the few people who had it, and she was probably one of the only ones who wasn’t saved as a contact in his phone. That, and he’d been confident, when she’d run out of his office, that she would change her mind.

“Hello?”

“This is Rey.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Did your private investigator give you my number, too?” She sounded disgruntled.

“No.” Ben remembered, suddenly, something he’d forgotten – asking for her phone number, after their frantic tryst on the roof. She’d refused him, laughing. That night seemed a long time ago, now, even if it was just six and a half weeks ago. “I knew you would call.”

Hux rolled his eyes. Ben had the strong feeling that the girl did, too, on the other side of the line.

“I read the agreement.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m not going to sign it.”

Ben exhaled sharply. “You’re making a mistake.” Hux made a face at him and mouthed the words _you can’t just threaten her._ Ben waved him off and Hux stood up, rolled his eyes one more time for effect, and left his office.

“You said you would negotiate, if I was reasonable.” The girl ignored his veiled threat, and soldiered on. “You said the baby is half yours. But it’s half mine, too. I can’t have everything I want, but you can’t either.”

“I don’t even know what you want, Rey.” He told her, voice gravelly.

“I’m just asking you to meet me. Not at your office. No lawyers. No standard agreements.” She took a deep, gusty breath over the phone. “Just you and me, pen and paper. We can talk about it like human beings, and maybe we can work something out so we don’t kill each other before the baby's eighteenth birthday."

When he didn't answer right away, she said, "Ben?"

He jumped at the use of his name. He'd never heard it come out of her mouth before, and he remembered that they were truly strangers, caught in a surreal, unfortunate situation together. Together, for better or worse. 

"Yes." He cleared his throat. "Yes, we can talk." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey hitting Ben, back by popular demand.


	4. Chapter 4

Benjamin Solo’s driver picked her up that night. He didn’t bother asking for the address, and Rey felt that familiar prickle of irritation that he’d invaded her privacy so thoroughly. She put on mascara and a nice sweater when she saw the car pull up, instead of the charcoal-stained t-shirt she’d been sketching in. She tamped down the nagging voice in the back of her head that said _what do you care what he thinks?_

The Mercedes looked out of place idling by the curb outside of her apartment. When Rey slid into it, she didn’t even bother asking where they were going. The vehicle hummed pleasantly as they traveled southbound. She traced the ridges of the buttery leather seat she was sitting in, and imagined a baby’s car seat fastened into it. A mad, nervous little giggle erupted in her chest. The driver’s eyes flickered towards her in the rearview mirror.

Being chauffeured through midtown Manhattan was surreal; almost like being on a spaceship. The city seemed like outer space from this perspective – full of twinkling lights, but no _sound._ She’d moved to New York from the rural England when she was nineteen, and to her, the city had never seemed quiet before.

The Mercedes pulled up in front of a mid-rise modern building in Tribeca. She stood on the curb for a moment, looking up at it. It looked as businesslike as his office building, but there was a doorman. This was his home. Fitting, that it would be cold and unwelcoming.

“Excuse me.” She approached the doorman meekly. “What apartment is Mr. Solo’s?”

The doorman’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “He doesn’t have an apartment.”

“Oh.” Rey looked around. “His driver –”

“He has the top floor.” The doorman clarified. “Second elevator to the right. There’s only one button, and it will take you right up. He’s expecting you.”

“Of course.” Rey almost pulled a face, wondering how many girls this doorman had vetted, either on their way in, because Solo had made a booty call, or on their way out, after a one night stand. She stopped herself. “Thank you.”

***

“Hi.” Solo stood, blocking the doorway with the sheer size of his body, for a long moment, and then remembered he had invited her, and jumped aside. Rey walked in, looking around and feeling like this, too, was some sort of alternate reality. No one had this much space in New York.

“Isn’t it kind of ridiculous to have your own elevator?” It was a stupid thing to say, but it just came out of her mouth before she could stop it.

He gave her an odd look. “Unlike you, I don’t enjoy walking up five flights of stairs. Do you want something to drink?” Rey looked blankly at him, and he made a face. “Right. Of course not.”

Rey’s stomach grumbled, just slightly, as if on cue. She hadn’t eaten much that day. The morning’s brief nausea had persisted for hours that day, whether because she was encroaching on pregnancy symptoms or because she had been thrown into a state of anxiety, she wasn’t sure. And right now, for some reason, chocolate milk sounded very, very good. “Actually, do you have chocolate milk?”

He blinked slowly. “…No.”

“Regular milk?” She’d settle for that.

“No.”

“You don’t have milk?” She almost said _children need things like milk_ but she didn’t need too. He understood; a strangely defensive look passed over his face.

 “I can buy milk.”

Again, Rey was tempted to make a snide comment – this time, about how he couldn’t buy everything, but she didn’t. He’d invited her to his home, and even if it was, in and of itself, intimidating. They were alone. He wasn’t wearing a suit. He was obviously making an effort to be cordial, even if that had involved a seriously misguided offer of alcohol. She could play nice, too. 

“Water is fine.” She followed him into the kitchen, past a massive granite island, and watched him fill up a glass for her. There were no walls between the kitchen and the living room, and there were, seemingly, no walls between the living room and the city. The view was bisected by the southeast corner of the building – to the left half was lower Manhattan, twinkling in the darkness, and to the right was the Hudson River, a fathomless black void. It was a beautiful view, and for a moment, Rey didn’t hate his penthouse for being modern and sterile and expensive.

Ben cleared his throat to get her attention, and pushed a glass of water across the kitchen island, wordlessly. She took a gulp of it. The room was so silent she could hear herself swallow.

“So.” He crossed his arms.

“So.” She repeated. “Where do we start?”

***

“I won’t have my child living in a ten-by-ten –”

“Twelve-by-twelve.”

“ – studio apartment in Harlem.”

“And I won’t have my child living in your – your _bachelor pad_ in Tribeca.”

“Oh, don’t be so self-righteous. You fucked a perfect stranger at a bar.” Solo scoffed. Rey scowled at him, but couldn’t find a retort. His lips twitched with satisfaction, at that. “And I think I can refrain from bringing home one night stands during the weeks that I have him.”

They glared at each other across his coffee table for a moment, and then Rey said, tartly, “I’m not leaving my apartment. I can’t afford to move.”

“I was thinking the Upper East Side.” He forged on, despite her hostile expression. “Good schools. Safe.”

Rey snorted. “And I certainly can’t afford the Upper East Side.”

Ben leaned back, mouth working for a moment as if he was debating how to word his next phrase. “I happen to… invest in real estate.”

Rey floundered for a moment. “I don’t want to move. I work in Harlem, anyways.”

“But when the baby is born, you – .”

“Baristas don’t get maternity leave.” Rey snapped. She had a feeling she knew what his next totally unreasonable request was going to be. Even if she worked a minimum wage job making coffee for rude people on their way to and from work, she had too much pride to let him ask her to stop working. That, and she didn’t have enough savings to stop working for six months or a year.

He looked like he wanted to say something, but he stopped himself. “Will you at least think about moving?”

Rey gave him a look, but grudgingly leaned forward and scribbled under the column labeled _B_ the words _Rey moves maybe_. For emphasis, she underlined the word _maybe_ three times. The blanks sheet of paper had been split into two columns, to list each of their demands. His column, the one on the left side of the paper, was rapidly being filled up. He’d launched into a list of demands, some of them reasonable, some of them completely out of touch with reality. Her column was empty.

“I want to send him to a private school.”

“Public school is _fine._ ” Rey gave him an exasperated look. “And it might be a girl.”

He ignored her comment about the baby’s sex. “If we alternate weeks, how do we chose which public school he goes to?” He countered. “Private school is better. We can choose one between my office and your apartment.” When he saw her hesitate, he added, with a manipulative tilt to his voice, “If you changed your mind about moving into a nicer neighborhood, though, I could reconsider public school.”

That was a fight Rey wasn’t prepared to lose on either front, so she changed the subject. “I’m only six weeks pregnant. You can’t seriously be planning this far ahead.”

Solo huffed. “Fine. In the short-term, here’s what I want. I want to be at all the doctor’s appointments. And I want a say in which hospital and ob-gyn we use.”

“ _We_?”

“I want to go to all the birth classes.”

“ _Birth classes_?” Rey sputtered. “I’m not – I’m not going to be going to _pre-natal yoga_ or anything.”

He didn’t laugh. “Birth classes, parenting classes, all of it. And I want to be there when the baby is born. In the room.”

 “Anything else?” Rey asked, acidly. Some of his demands – unreasonable though they might be – made sense. Still, he kept adding to the list, and her anger kept mounting.

“Yes.” If he picked up on the anger in her voice, he didn’t let on. He met her eyes squarely, and when he made this request, his tone brooked no argument. “Twice a week, every week. The three of us spend two hours together.”

“What?” Rey stopped writing.

“I…” Ben’s jaw worked for a moment. “I don’t remember the last time my parents were in the same room. I want my child to have that.” He must have seen the look of disbelief on her face, because he added, flatly, all the subtle emotion that had been present in his voice a moment before now gone, “This is non-negotiable.”

“Everything is non-negotiable with you.” Rey forgot about the brief flash of sympathy she’d felt for him when he said that. She set down the pencil, resisting the urge to fling it at his stupidly good hair.

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is.” She gestured to the paper. “Look at this. This is everything you want, and none of what I want.”

Ben looked almost surprised. His mouth twitched, tucking in on itself, and then he asked, as if it took him a great deal of effort, “What do you want?”

“Health insurance.”

“Done.” He sounded almost bored.

“Daycare.”

Now, he couldn’t resist saying what he’d bitten back before. “I’d rather our child be raised by his mother.”

“And I’d rather not starve.”

“I wouldn’t let you starve.” He sounded disgruntled. “What do you make, thirty-thousand a year?”

 “ _Wait_.” Rey suddenly sat up straighter, and cutting him off before he could lecture her about how daycare would cost him more than she made in a year. “You are such a fucking hypocrite. You don’t want me to use daycare, but what are you going to do when you have the baby?  Bring him to the _stock exchange_?”

“My mother will watch him.” Ben reached for the paper to write that down; she snatched it away. He threw a barb her way, in retaliation. “You don’t have family in New York, so she’s the obvious choice.”

Rey felt her cheeks heat up. “You’re an asshole.”

“You say that a lot.” He observed, calmly. “Is there anything else you want?”

“I want three weeks out of the month.” Rey knew, when she said that, that he would bow up on her. He did.

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Fine, three, but I get to see the baby two nights during your extra week.”

“Fine.” Rey crossed her arms over her chest, gloating over her small victory. “Three weeks.”

“Anything else?” He mimicked her tone from earlier in their conversation, when she’d been annoyed by his list of demands. “And before you even ask about money, don’t. I can either give you a credit card, or write you a check every month for the baby’s expenses during the two weeks that you have him.” He sounded almost smug, as if now, she couldn’t accuse him of not caring what she wanted.  

“I wasn’t going to ask about money.” Rey’s ire rose at his presumptuousness, and her voice rose along with it. “I want you to treat me like an _equal_ , not like an _incubator_. I realize nothing about me is good enough for you, but I’m not going to move to the Upper East Side and send my kid to a prep school. And I’m sure as hell not going to give up my minimum wage, _shitty_ job because it’s not good enough for _you_. It’s my job, and my apartment, and it’s _my_ life." 

She was breathing hard, and he was looking at her appraisingly. When she’d been silent for a few seconds, he asked, quietly, “Are you finished?”

“I could keep going. Or you could apologize for being a controlling asshole.”

Ben barked out a laugh, and then sobered. “Before they got divorced, my parents fought about everything.” His voice was very low, like a rumble in the distance. “I hated it. I want us to get along. For the baby’s sake.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, and then Rey exhaled heavily. She offered a truce. “We have a whole lifetime to work all of these details out. Quite literally, a whole lifetime.”

He nodded, slowly, accepting her verbal white flag. Part of her sagged into his expensive midcentury modern couch in relief. The other part of thought about the truth, and the _enormity_ of what she’d just said.

Ben Solo was, after all, the _last_ person she wanted to spend a lifetime with.

                                                                                                                                             

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What could possibly go wrong with this little co-parenting plan?


	5. Chapter 5

Ben met Rey in the waiting room of an upscale, hushed ob-gyn’s office in Chelsea, handing her a crisp, laminated new insurance card, and muttering an apology for his lateness. They were ushered into an exam room almost as soon as they arrived. The nurse left Rey with cheerful instructions to take off her clothes and put on a hospital gown, open to the front, and left Ben with no escape.

As soon as the nurse left them alone, Rey folded the blue, scratchy hospital gown against her chest, and threw Ben a look of trepidation.

“I won’t look.” Ben turned around and faced the wall. “Promise.”

He looked, instead, at the poster on the wall. It showed a cross-section of an intrauterine fetus, month by month. He found the second month and examined it. The illustrated fetus at that age was still tiny, curled up into a small pouch in a barely extended, disembodied abdomen. “They’re still really small.”

“Excuse me?” Rey sputtered behind him. “I’ll have you know I’ve gone up a whole cup size in the past four weeks.”

“Jesus Christ, I mean babies. Babies at two months.” Ben turned around, realized she was naked, and looked up at the ceiling immediately. “I wasn’t talking about your breasts. I wasn’t even looking at them.”

“You _just_ looked.”

“I didn’t see anything.” Ben lied, crossing his arms over his chest. He focused on the pebbled material the ceiling tiles were made from, and wondered, absently, if it had asbestos in it. “And you don’t need to be so _touchy_. They’re perfectly adequate.”

“I thought you said you didn’t see anything, jackass.” He suspected it was his use of the word _adequate,_ and not his glimpse of her bare chest, that _really_ had annoyed her.

“Well, there was that one time.” Figuring the coast was clear, Ben looked back at her. “You know, the time I got you pregnant.”

Rey scowled at him, pinking, but the door to the exam room opened before she could say anything.

The ob-gyn who they had eventually agreed on – after a long sequence of somewhat contentious emails – was a diminutive woman in her sixties named Dr. Kananta. She greeted them as Mr. and Mrs. Solo, seeming totally unfazed when Rey corrected her, saying, a little too vehemently, “I am _not_ married to him.”

“Well, it’s the twenty-first century, isn’t it?” Dr. Kanata responded, mildly. Perching enormous glasses on the bridge of her nose, she settled onto a swiveling stool in the exam room, and launched into a seemingly endless stream of questions. Had she ever been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection? Had he? Had she ever been pregnant before? Were her menstrual cycles regular? When was the first day of her last period? Did she use any medications, or have any allergies? Was there any history of psychiatric problems? Did she smoke or drink?

The litany of questions made Ben’s head spin. He answered, using an untoward number of _ums_ and _uhs,_ every time the doctor directed a question to him. Rey looked equally overwhelmed. She shot him an embarrassed look, before answering some of the questions. It occurred to Ben that he was finding out more about her in this rapid-fire series of questions than he ever had before. The thought made him feel a bit guilty, and made him remember the word she’d used two weeks earlier, when they’d negotiated their co-parenting plan late into the night. _Incubator._

“Are you having any morning sickness?”

“Vomiting.” Rey made a face. “A lot of vomiting. Usually it stops by eleven or so.”

“Fatigue, lower back pain, frequent urination?”

“Yes, yes, and yes.” Rey exhaled heavily, as if she was relieved to finally able to vent about her symptoms to a sympathetic ear. It occurred to Ben that he hadn’t asked her about them at all. “And I’m so tired. I’m tired all the time.”

 “Take it easy during the first trimester. Take some time off of work, if you can. It gets worse before it gets better.”

Ben shot Rey a look that said _I told you so_. She frowned at him. “I’m okay. A friend is picking up some shifts for me, and helping me out with errands and things. He’s been great.” That last comment was directed at him, Ben decided. He gave her a sidelong glance, considered asking her who that friend was, exactly, and decided against it. That question would certainly reveal to Dr. Kanata that they were all but perfect strangers, and he still had a nagging sense of shame about that.

“Any family history of genetic or chromosomal abnormality, developmental delays, or birth defects? Either of you?”

“No.” Ben didn’t have to think back very far, being an only child, and the child of only children. He glanced at Rey, wondering how many relatives she would have to index in her mind to answer the doctor’s question.

“Um.” Rey’s face colored slightly. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about my biological parents.”

“Do you think we need to do genetic testing?” Ben interjected. “Because of that?”

Dr. Kanata swayed back and forth on the stool. “I’ll run the preliminary buccal swab and blood screens today, but if nothing pops up, I’d almost prefer you didn’t undergo amniocentesis. The procedure presents about a two percent risk of miscarriage.”

“I don’t want to do it, then.” Ben wasn’t sure where his conviction came from, considering that his first preference had been termination.

“I – I want to know, though.” Rey sounded much less sure. She chewed on her lip. “I just would rather know if there’s something wrong, since I didn’t know my family history.”

“Would it make a difference?” Ben leaned back in the uncomfortable plastic chair he’d been given, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Maybe.” She admitted, avoiding his gaze. She fiddled with a loose thread on the hem of her hospital gown.

Dr. Kanata, sensing that the air was fraught with tension, cleared her throat delicately. “There’s no rush. We wouldn’t be able to do amniocentesis for another seven weeks, no matter what you decide.” She looked between them, and said, almost sternly, “Together.”

“Right.” Rey looked resigned; _good_ , Ben thought. He had no intention of compromising on this particular point. Let her call him a controlling asshole.

“Anyways.” Dr. Kanata spun around on her stool. “Shall we get to the really fun part?”

Rey lay back on the exam table, awkwardly, and suddenly, Ben wondered if he could make an excuse and leave the room. He rose an inch from his chair, but then the doctor was spreading open the sides of the hospital gown. The chair squeaked, awkwardly, as he sat back down.

Her breasts really _were_ bigger, he noted, despite his best efforts to be clinical during the exam. It was cold in the boxy little room, and her nipples were pebbled up. That was a somehow familiar sight; one that made his throat constrict a little.

***

_Ben eased two fingers under the strap of the girl’s dress, testing whether it would stretch. It did, so he pulled it down, exposing her left breast. It was too dark to see much, but he could feel the tight point of her nipple in the cold, night air as he closed his hand over her. His palm was big enough to hold her entire breast, to crush it, but he held back, easing his thumb in a crescent shape around the underside of the soft, fleshy mound._

_Of her own accord, the girl reached for the other strap and eased it over her shoulder. Her black dress puddled at her waist, above where his hands were gripping her, keeping her suspended between the wall and his body._

_Ben took his hand off of the girl’s breast, eliciting a little noise of disapproval, and braced it on the brick wall beside her head. He hunched forward, his pelvis still rutting against her, and put his face into the shallow valley of her cleavage. She smelled very clean. He could taste a salty bead of sweat there, and feel her heart’s rapid patter against his lips._

***

“Ouch.” Rey winced as the doctor’s latex-covered hands prodded and jabbed at her. “Sorry. They’re sore.”

“Do you hear that?” Dr. Kanata peered at Ben. “Be gentle with these.”

Rey turned bright scarlet. Ben wondered how she’d feel if she knew what he’d just been reminiscing about. He looked at the floor, both to give her a shred of dignity, and to avoid any more inappropriate thoughts. It wasn’t even clear to him whether he’d remembered that moment, or whether he’d imagined it. Either way, he felt like a deviant. 

Dr. Kanata didn’t ask if he wanted to leave during the pelvic exam and pap smear, either. He sat near Rey’s head, thankful for the folded sheet over her knees, blocking his view. Still, he folded his hands, and stared at them. It wasn’t until the doctor stepped out to let her change back into her clothing that he felt he had the right to look around the room.

“Are you sure you want to come to every appointment?” Rey sat up, wrapping her arms around herself, protectively.

“Are you really throwing up every day?” He didn’t answer her question.

She gave him a look. “Yes.”

“Are you going to keep working?”

“I’m pregnant, not disabled.” Rey scoffed. “Turn around. Anyways, my friend Finn is covering a lot of shifts for me. He’s been wonderful. Midnight ice cream runs and everything.”

“You could call me, you know.” He didn’t mean to sound sullen, as he stood facing the wall, but he did.

“And what? Ask you to come all the way to Harlem to bring me ice cream and hold my hair while I crouch over the toilet?”

Ben couldn’t keep the exasperation out of his voice. “Are you hungry, or just hormonal? Because I just sat through a two-hour appointment with you, and you’re acting like I did something wrong.”

“I didn’t _ask_ you to come.” Rey’s clothes stopped rustling, so he turned around to face her. She looked up at him, her face like a thundercloud. “Let’s go.”

***

Ben’s driver dropped Rey off at her apartment before taking him back to the office. They sat in terse silence in the back seat together, both too proud to argue in front of another person. When they pulled up outside of her building, though, Ben ignored the excuses and protests, and followed Rey five flights of stairs up to her apartment.

“How are you even going to fit a crib in here?” He stood in the center of the room, spreading out his arms. “I can almost touch the walls at the same time.”

“I’ll figure it out.” She unwrapped her scarf, sounding hostile.

“So you haven’t thought about moving.”

“No.” Rey’s eyes narrowed. “I said, I’ll figure it out.”

“Sometimes, I feel like I’m the one taking this seriously.” Ben heard the timbre of his voice drop, the way his father’s had, when he got angry with his mother. “I’m the only one making plans, and you fight me every step of the way. Not because you actually _care_ , but just because you want to be a bitch.”

Rey balled her scarf and threw it across the room, narrowly missing his head. In the small space, he couldn’t say whether that was on purpose. “I’m sorry I’m not picking out fucking _paint colors_ for a non-existent nursery. I didn’t _plan_ on this baby.”

“Neither did I, but at least I’m not pretending that it’s not happening.” Ben moved into her line of vision, so she couldn’t ignore him.

“Pretending it’s _not happening_?” Rey stuck out her finger and poked him in the chest, violently. “I’m throwing up every day and falling asleep on my feet, and I’m broke and I pee every five minutes. It’s happening _to me_. All _you_ have to do throw money at it – ”

“No.” Ben held up his hands. “That is unfair, and you know it. I’m done with this conversation.” He took two strides to the door, yanking the handle more violently than was necessary. “I’ll see you at the ultrasound next week.”

***

When Ben called Hux later that week, the other man made an excuse. When he called Phasma, she made the same excuse. He glumly resigned himself to the fact that they were avoiding him, but not each other, and went out alone. Without Hux and Phasma, he didn’t turn flirting with women into a protracted game. He found the first attractive girl who eyed his watch and said she’d seen him in Forbes, and took her home.

Now, they were on his couch, and she was saying something in his ear about wanting him to fuck her. He didn’t particularly want to – he was well on his way to being drunk, and that sounded like too much effort. His hands found her shoulders, and he exerted just enough pressure to make her sink to her knees in front of him.

A flash of annoyance crossed the girl’s face, then she hid it and reached for his belt buckle. Ben leaned back into the sofa, pleasantly buzzed, and watched her take out his member. She feigned enthusiasm as she put it into her mouth, and that was good enough.

Suddenly, his phone vibrated in his pocket, against her cheek. “ _Ouch_.”

“Sorry.” Ben mumbled, sitting up and fishing out the offending cell phone. He was about to silence it so he could get back to getting his rocks off when he saw the name on the screen. “I’m sorry, I have to take this.”

“You take business calls at eleven?” The girl sat back on her knees, pouting.

“It’s not work, it’s my – never mind, can you just give me a minute?” Ben unceremoniously moved her from between his knees and stood, tucking himself back into his pants. Somehow, it didn’t feel right to talk to Rey on the phone with his cock out and a girl on her knees in front of him.

“Rey?” He put the phone to his ear. “If you’re calling me because you changed your mind and you want me to bring you ice cream, I swear to God –”

“Ben." Her voice was choked up. It stopped him short, and stopped his heart. "I’m at the emergency room.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you are beginning to sympathize with Asshole Ben. My evil plan is working *rubs hands together gleefully*
> 
> P.S. Those of you who have wee ones know that I am glossing over a lot of what goes on at the first doctor's visit. If I didn't, this story would be way, way too long. Pregnancy is weird.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm updating super quickly since that cliffhanger was so shameless. You're welcome. Don't get used to it.

“Why did you take this route?” Ben leaned forward in the back seat of the cab, splaying his fingers on the divider between himself and the driver. Rather than call his driver and wait to be picked up, he’d run out onto the curve and jumped into a taxi, dragging the bewildered girl with him, giving her a twenty-dollar bill, and telling her she’d have to take the next one that came along.

“I don’t control the traffic, buddy.” The cabbie drawled, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

Muttering an obscenity under his breath, Ben read the sign on the plexiglass. _Assaulting a driver is punishable to up to twenty-five years in prison._

Not worth it, then. He opened the map application on his phone, jiggling his knees and hitting the back of the driver’s seat. That earned him a glare. Eleven blocks to Beth Israel.

They were stopped at a traffic light. Ben found two twenty-dollar bills in his pockets, crumpled them up, and pushed them through the window in the plexiglass divider. “Keep the change.”

He launched himself out of the back door of the cab, narrowly avoided being hit by a passing vehicle as the light changed, and stumbled onto the sidewalk. Seven blocks north. Four blocks west. He started running.

***

“What happened?”

“Ben?” Rey sat up in the hospital bed, white-faced.

“What happened?” He repeated himself, crossing the room in three strides.

“Someone left a crib on the curb for trash pickup.” Rey’s face was tearstained. “I tried to take it up the stairs, and I fell.”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ.” Ben balled his fists, circling the end of the hospital bed. “What were you thinking?”

“Mr. Kenobi, that’s not helpful right now.” The physician interjected, from the other side of the room.

“We’re _not_ married.” Rey snapped.

“Oh.” The doctor’s brow creased. “You can’t be in here, then.”

“I’m the father.”

“Only relatives of the _patient_ –”

“He can stay.” Rey interrupted, to Ben’s surprise. “I want him here.”

“Fine.” The physician eyed him, suspiciously. “No yelling.”

Ben gave him a murderous look, and threw himself into the chair next to the head of the bed. He didn’t trust himself to speak anymore with yelling – and he could sense that Rey was on the verge of bursting into tears, and might very well do so if he yelled _at_ her – so he stayed silent.

Rey asked, in a low voice, when the doctor left the room, “Have you been drinking?”

“Yes.” Ben told her, shortly. “But I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Her jaw twitched. “Maybe I shouldn’t have called.”

But during the pelvic exam, she reached out, and gripped his thigh with fingers that felt like iron talons. Ben almost took her hand in his, but that felt too intimate.

“No bleeding.” The doctor emerged from between her legs, lowering them from the stirrups. Ben still didn’t say anything. It felt like he didn’t even exhale. “Let’s get an ultrasound tech in here, please.”

The jelly the technician spread on Rey’s bare belly was clear and viscous. It looked silly, on her still-flat stomach. But when the screen came to life, in the static mass of her body, Ben could see what looked like a black pouch, and a white, lima bean-shaped object nestled into the corner of it, shifting ever so slightly.

“That?” Rey stared at the screen. Her voice rose. “Is that the baby? Does it look okay?”

The physician squinted at the screen. Ben’s throat was constricted. 

“Mm hmm.” Those two non-committal syllables almost killed him. The doctor kept looking at the screen, as the technician moved the ultrasound wand in slow, careful circles. He wiped off some of the jelly and set the Doppler against her skin. He listened to it for what seemed like a eon. Finally, he straightened up. “Heartbeat normal. Movement normal. And no bleeding.” He turned to Rey. “Your baby is fine. You’re very lucky.”

Ben heard, as if the distance, the shallow, scratchy breaths, the breaths of someone trying not to cry. His eyes felt very hot and itchy. The breaths became shorter, and shorter, until they were escaping in short, jerky gasps. It wasn’t until Rey looked away from the ultrasound image and at him that Ben realized she wasn’t the one he heard.

“Ben.” There was a tenderness on her face that he could swear was maternal, and suddenly, he needed to be alone.

“I need to – I’ll be back.” He almost knocked over his chair as he stood. She didn’t try to stop him, bowing her head and looking down at her gooey, exposed stomach, and then back at the ultrasound.

Alone, in the hallway, Ben walked around the corner, put his face into his hands, and cried.

***

“Mom?” He felt six years old again, creeping down the hallway to his parents' bedroom – no, his mother’s bedroom – crying because he’d had a nightmare and had a gaping hole under his breastbone.

“Ben?” His mother’s was groggy over the telephone. “It’s almost one in the morning.”

“I know, I just needed to talk to you.”

Suspicion crept into her voice. “Did you get arrested?” She would be at her house in the Hamptons, enjoying the last of the moderate weather before the winter forced her back to Manhattan. He imagined her sitting up in bed and turning on her bedside lamp, ready to spring into action and bail him out. She’d had to do that twice when he was in college.

 “No.” If he hadn’t just been crying, he probably would have laughed. “I just needed to hear your voice.”

“You haven’t needed that for a long time, Ben.”

“There’s a lot going on right now.” He exhaled heavily, and she waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, she asked, softly,

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

A part of him did. His mother always had a solution. She didn’t always know what to say – in fact, she rarely did, she was as tactless as he was – but she was a woman of action. “Go back to bed, Mom.”

“All right.” She hesitated. “I love you, sweetheart.”

“Mom.”

“Yes?” She yawned.

“When did you know you loved me?”

She was silent for a minute. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Just answer the question.”

His mother paused for second, and then said, with a warmth in her voice he rarely heard, “From the first moment I saw you, on the ultrasound.”

***

 When Ben went back into the exam room, Rey was staring at the ceiling, dressed again, her hands folded over her flat stomach. She looked over at him, brow creasing. “Are you okay?”

“You fell down a flight of stairs. I should be the one asking that.” Ben knew he looked like he’d been crying – his eyes had been red-rimmed when he’d gone into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face – so he deflected the question. He wasn’t embarrassed, per se, but there was a reason he hadn’t cried in front of her.

An almost dreamy smile flickered on her lips. “I broke my wrist.”

“What?” Ben stared at her face, then at her hand. It was splinted, and he could swear it hadn’t been when they’d looked at the ultrasound. In fact, that was the hand she’d left bruises on his thigh with.

“I didn’t even realize it hurt until after I saw the baby was okay.” She made a soft, amused noise. “But then it started hurting like a bitch.”

“Can you take anything for it?” Ben made his way to the chair by the bed again, and sat it in it, heavily and slowly.

“They wouldn’t give me the good stuff.” Rey made a face. “I’ll survive.”

“You scared me tonight, Rey.” He said the words into his clasped hands.

“I know.” Rey’s voice was very small. “It was stupid. I’m sorry.”

Ben nodded, slowly. “You can’t carry things up and down those stairs.”

“I know.”

They were silent, for a few minutes. Rey looked resigned; Ben seized the opportunity. 

“A friend of mine is putting his brownstone on the market.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “It’s in the West Village. Less pretentious than the Upper East Side. Consider it a compromise.”

Rey gave him a mistrustful look. “It’s a long way from Harlem.”

“I think you’d like it.” He paused. “I’d like it if you would think about it.”

***

When Ben took Rey to the brownstone the next week, he could tell that she did like it. She looked down the street and saw the Hudson, three blocks away. She looked up at the canopy formed the row of trees along the cobbled street. Inside, she walked around the parlor-floor unit in silence, examining the built-in bookshelves, parquet floors, and high ceilings.

“So?” Ben followed her from the kitchen to the living room.

“It’s nice. But it doesn’t seem like your style.” She raised her brows at him.

“It isn’t.” Ben laughed. “I’d prefer to put you in a high-rise with an elevator and doorman. And maybe padded walls.” She glared, but he knew she wasn’t really angry. He was getting better at discerning between real anger and anger as a matter of principle. “But this place seemed like it was more _your_ style.” He leaned on the arched door between the kitchen and the living room. “Is it?”

“Yes.” Rey admitted. She looked out the bay window, at the common courtyard. “I could paint here. Well, once I get my cast off. The light is right for painting.”

“That’s good.” Ben examined his fingernails, and told her, casually, “I already put an offer on it.”

“What?” She whipped around. “I said I liked it, not that I would move.” Her voice crept up in pitch, sounding almost distressed.

“Please don’t freak out.”

“How much was it?” Her eyes narrowed dangerously.

“It was a good investment.” He hedged.

“ _How much_?” She almost growled out the words.

“One point four.”

“ _Million_?” She paled. “How much do you want in rent?”

“Rey, I’m not going to let you pay me rent.” Ben tried to sound appeasing, but instead, he just sounded nervous. He had every right to be; she was hormonal and she looked almost catatonic. “I’m not your landlord, I’m your…” He trailed off. “I just want this to be easier on both of us.” When she didn’t respond, he tried luring her with one more enticement. He still didn’t want her working long hours, but he had to sweeten the deal, somehow. “My driver will take you to and from work. I know it’s a long way –”

“I got fired.”

“What?”

“I kept having to leave in the middle of my shift because I was throwing up.” Rey lifted her bound and splinted wrist, gesturing with it. “And then I broke my wrist. It’s really slow making lattes with one hand.” Ben knew he should express that he was sorry, but he wasn’t. He didn’t say anything. She sniffed, pathetically. “I was going to move in with a friend until I got on my feet again.”

“Move in here.” Ben crossed the room. “You can find a job down here, if you really want to. There are a plenty of overpriced coffee shops in the West Village.”

Rey gave a watery little laugh at that. “Why are you so determined to help me?”

“This isn’t about you.” That was a white lie, but there was some truth to it. “This place is a mile from my building, and less than three miles from my office. I work a lot, and I work odd hours. If you’re here, I can see the baby more. This is about me being selfish.”

Rey looked like she was about to cry. She turned and walked away from him, slowly, down the hallway of the long, narrow building. When she disappeared into one of the bedrooms, Ben followed her. “Rey?”

She was standing in the center of the room. It was almost as big as her whole apartment was in Harlem. When she saw him in the doorjamb, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve, furiously. “I was just thinking. This can be the baby’s room.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You *know* Mama Leia is suspicious now. Also, have we seen the last of Asshole Ben and Stubborn Rey? (Not a chance).


	7. Chapter 7

It wasn’t Rey who opened the door to the brownstone. “You must be the asshole who got Rey pregnant.”

“Who are you?” Ben took a step back, appraising the man.

“Finn.”

That name, he knew. Finn who had covered her shifts. Finn who brought her ice cream when she had cravings. “Finn.”

“Yeah.”

“I’d ask you if I can come in, but I own this place.”

Finn didn’t move. “You know that’s why she didn’t want to move, right? Because she didn’t want you to own her home. She didn’t want you to own _her_.”

Ben wasn’t sure what made him more angry – the other man’s tone, or the kernel of truth to his words. They were words he couldn’t really rebut – she had been reluctant to move, and that was in no small part due to her animosity towards him.

Instead of retaliating, he moved past the other man, turning his body sideways, and went into the apartment. The late morning Saturday sun stained the wide expanse of empty floors and walls. There wasn’t any furniture in the living room, save a small desk, pushed into the bay window’s alcove and stacked high with boxes. When they’d gone to pick out a crib and changing table and rocker the week before, she’d offhandedly joked that the nursey would be the only furnished room in the whole apartment. He’d thought she was kidding. She hadn’t been – the few items that had crammed her Harlem apartment full looked laughably sparse here. “Where’s Rey?”

Before Finn could answer, the unmistakable sound of retching came from the hall bathroom. Ben moved, just barely, towards the closed door, and the younger man’s hand shot out, grasping his arm.

“Back off.”

“What did you say to me?” Ben pulled his arm away, but stepped closer, tilting his chin down as he spoke to emphasize his four-inch advantage.

“I said back off. You aren’t her boyfriend.”

“And you aren’t the father of her baby.” Ben looked at him for a long second, and then, when the other man didn’t move, pushed past him, bumping his shoulder into his clavicle with no small amount of force. It was a barely satisfying substitute for the punch he wanted to throw.

Rey looked at him through the mirror. She was bent over the sink, rinsing her mouth out. “Ben?”

“I thought you might need help building that crib.” He shut the door behind himself. “Didn’t realize your boyfriend was here. Didn’t realize you had a boyfriend, actually.”

 Rey straightened up, slowly. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“But he wants to be.”

She examined the sink fixtures, fiercely, to avoid making eye contact through the mirror. “I think so.”

“He must really like you if he’s willing to get in the middle of all this.” Ben told her, bluntly. She flinched, just slightly, and then turned around to face him, crossing her arms over herself. She was in a big, paint-splattered t-shirt. The paint was bright, sunny yellow, belaying the seriousness of her expression.

“I might have a boyfriend one day. Not necessarily Finn, but I might meet someone. I might even get married.”

“I know.”

“You might, too.”

“No, I won’t.” Ben countered, instantly. “Trust me.”

“Maybe you won’t.” She agreed, maybe after taking a quick inventory of his personality and history of short romantic entanglements. “But one day there might be another man who’s a part of this baby’s life.”

“I’m not ready for that.” Ben didn’t care that he sounded selfish and petty. “I’m fighting just to be a part of this baby’s life. I’m not ready to share.”

Rey gave him a look that was sympathetic, but not in a pleasant way. He hated that look on her face. It was the look of someone who saw something damaged and was curious what had broken it. “Finn already helped me build the crib.”

Irrational anger swelled in his gut, but Ben tried to tamp it down. He didn’t want to see that look on her face again. Instead of angry, his response came out terse and tight, and hurt. “Right.”

“Can you paint?” The look on her face softened.

“I’m not very artistic.” He wasn’t; he wondered if their child would be more like her – artistic and idealistic – or like him, analytical and good with numbers.

She held the hem of her paint-splattered t-shirt out, so he could see the yellow flecks. “It’s just four walls, Ben. You can paint all the places I can’t reach.”

***

When Ben suggested a co-parenting class before he left the brownstone, Rey laughed. Ben didn’t. He told her he'd already put it on his schedule, so at five in the evening the next Thursday, she bundled up and took the subway to his office. She was too proud to call his driver – even though Ben had programmed his telephone number into her cell phone – and too bone-tired to walk.

She might have been imagining things, but Dopheld Mitaka gave her an almost friendly smile when she passed him in the hallway on her way to Ben’s office. “Can I take your coat, ma’am?”

She passed off the garment. “Thank you.”

“Do you have an appointment?” It took her a second to realize the secretary wasn’t serious. “I’m joking, Miss Kenobi. You don’t need an appointment.”

“Oh.” She laughed, awkwardly. “That’s nice of you.”

“Oh, that’s not me. Mr. Solo put you on the list.”

“What list?”

Dopheld lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level. “The list of people who don’t need an appointment to go into his office.”

“Oh.” Rey almost laughed at the idea of Ben having a little black book. “Are there very many people on the list?”

“Only two.” Mitaka told her, mysteriously, but he didn’t elaborate. “You can let yourself in.”

His office was almost immaculate, as if no one actually worked there. There were reading glasses on his desk, and that intrigued her.  She wandered around the room, making her way behind the long, rectangular piece of furniture and examining the glasses.

The book the glasses were resting on stood out starkly from everything else in the room –  it was a worn-out, dog-eared paperback, with a brightly colored but time-faded cover. Even the font that the title was printed in was cheerful and kitschy: _What to Expect When You’re Expecting_.

Rey almost laughed at the absurdity of seeing that book on Ben Solo’s desk, among spreadsheets and ledgers and memos. She moved the glasses, carefully, and flipped the book open. He’d marked his place with a stiff piece of paper.

Not paper, she realized, as she opened to the earmarked page. Ultrasound photos. The technician had given them copies when they’d finally left the emergency room at three in the morning. Ben was using his as a bookmark. Hers were tucked in a drawer, somewhere that felt safe, but somewhere she didn’t look every day.

“Sorry I’m running late.” Ben’s polished black dress shoes clicked on the floor, alerting her to his presence.

When she straightened up and moved around the desk, a peculiar look crossed his face. “What?”

“What, what?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

He gestured awkwardly at her midsection. “You’re… showing.”

“No, I’m not.” Rey was borderline offended. “It’s only eleven weeks. The baby is the size of a…  a _kumquat_. At least that’s what your book says.”

She could have sworn she saw the tips of his ears flush pink, peeking out from under his hair. “I’m serious. You have a little bump.”

Rey scoffed. “I do not. It’s just all the ice cream.”

“Look.” He pulled her over to the wall of windows, and, standing behind her, pulled her shirt tightly over her stomach. They stared together at her reflection.

He was right. Something didn’t look quite the same about her stomach. There was a soft, full roundness to her lower belly. It poked out like a _bubble_ , for lack of a better word. Even though her breasts had swollen, her belly still somehow distended just past them. She’d been wearing winter coats and big t-shirts and telling herself she was just bloated, but the bump was there. Small, still somewhat cute, but there.

“No.” She stammered, desperately. “It’s… it’s supposed to be a kumquat!”

Ben threw his head back, roaring with laughter at the look of horror on her face. “Rey, look at _me._ This baby is going to be huge.”

“This is all your fault!” She wailed, looking at her tiny little bump and imagining it getting much, much bigger. “I’m going to be enormous.”

Ben only laughed harder.

***

“In centuries past,” The middle-aged, bespectacled woman’s voice was a soothing lull as she paced, surrounded by a circle of couches full of smiling millennials and hand-holding couples. Rey felt horribly out of place among them. “People got married for a lot of reasons, none of which were very romantic. Now, people get married for love. But statistically, couples become much less happy, much less satisfied in their marriage, when they become parents.”

“I can’t believe you made me come to this class.” Rey hissed, when she caught Ben’s eye. They had, unfortunately, picked a couch that was far away from the door, and no escape was in sight. She looked at the door, longingly.

“I’m sorry.” Ben mouthed the words. The speaker caught his eye, and frowned at him.

“Parents focus on, and love their child so much, that they forget to love each other. They have nothing to talk about except their child. They have nothing in common except their child.”

Hux – also the child of divorcees – had suggested the class. It was called _Co-Parenting 101_ , and Ben had been under the impression it served their demographic: people who were having a baby together, but weren’t _together_ together. Everyone else at this class most certainly was _together_ together.

“This first session will focus on the relationship between Mom and Dad,” The speaker came up behind them and placed one hand on Ben’s shoulder, and one on Rey’s. “Because that is the first building block for a happy family unit, and a happy child. Primarily, we’re going to focus on the importance of keeping physical and emotional intimacy in your relationship during this changing time.”

“We’re going to start with an exercise about expectations. We’re going to ask our partners what they expect from parenthood. Go ahead and face each other.”

“Please kill me.” Rey said, through gritted teeth, as she swung her legs up onto the couch and crossed them. Ben stifled a laugh. He earned another glare from the speaker.

“How many hours do you expect to sleep each night?” The speaker began her list of questions, presenting them to the group in a soothing, sing-song voice.

“Depends on whether you have the baby or I do.” Ben answered pragmatically. Rey shrugged her agreement. The chorus of hushed voices answering the question around the room, on all the different couches, swelled.

“Who do you expect will wake up with the baby at night?”

“Me.”

“Me.” The spoke at the same time, and then Rey asked, pointedly, “Do you have breasts?”

“I thought we were going to bottle feed.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I thought we were going to breast feed.”

The group, apparently, was moving on, so they did too, albeit uneasily. “Do you expect your child to be raised in a religious tradition?”

“No.”

“Well, I’d prefer if he was baptized.”

Rey gave him an incredulous look. “ _You’re_ religious?”

“We can discuss this later.”

“Apparently we have a _lot_ to discuss later.”

“Do you expect that the family will attend worship services together?”

“No.” Rey answered for both of them; with a stern look at Ben. He didn’t resist.

“Do you expect to fight in front of your child?”

“No.” Ben answered immediately.

“ _Yes_.” When he gave her a look, she told him, sarcastically, “I’m just being realistic.”

“Do you expect to go to marriage counseling?” They ignored that question. “How often do you expect to have sex when you have a newborn?”

Ben opened his mouth, and then snapped it shut, deciding it was best not to answer that question, and Rey suddenly burst into laughter. “I don’t even want to _know_ how often you have sex. It will just make me feel even worse about my sex life.”

He gave her a strange look, but didn’t comment.

“Do you expect sex to be the same after the baby is born?”

“In that I’m not having it? Yes.” The absurdity of the situation leant itself to Rey’s answers. She answered flippantly, honestly, and sarcastically. She saw Ben’s lips twitch at her forthrightness.

“I don’t even know how to answer that question.” He admitted, chuckling. “Yes?”

“Do you expect to still be sexually attracted to your partner?” The speaker looked at them with suspicious eyes, and walked closer, so she could listen in on their conversation, as if she knew they weren’t taking it seriously.

“Oh, definitely.” Rey deadpanned. “You’re going to be a daddy in every sense of the word.”

Ben choked on a laugh. He could play along, even if he felt slightly ridiculous. “And you’re going to be very sexy when you’re nine months pregnant. Like a… sexy watermelon.”

Rey snorted, breath hitching as she tried not to laugh.

“Good.” The speaker nodded approvingly. “Humor is good. Laughing together is good.”

Ben’s shoulders shook with the effort of not laughing out loud at the ludicrousness of this class, and of their situation as a whole. Rey grinned at him.

It did feel good to laugh, she decided.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You want Jealous Ben? You got him. Also, second trimester here we come! 
> 
> P.S. It did felt good to laugh today. Take care of yourselves, American friends. Do something you enjoy and escape for a little while. I enjoy writing. I hope you enjoy reading my writing.


	8. Chapter 8

 

“Thanks for meeting me, and not just barging into my office.” Ben sat down at a white-table clothed Greenwich Village bistro across from his mother. “I was wondering how long it would take before your curiosity got the better of you.”

“So, who is she?” Leia Organa didn’t bother with niceties. She hadn’t touched her tea – unlike her – and although she was making an effort to keep her voice neutral, he could tell she was on edge.

“She’s…” Ben paused. Eleven weeks ago, when Rey had approached him in the bar, he wouldn’t have been able to answer that question because he hadn’t known anything about her. Now, he didn’t know how to answer the question because he felt like he knew too much about her, and most of what he knew couldn’t summarize her or put her in a neat little box. “She’s not exactly what you’re expecting.”

“And she’s expecting.”

“Very funny.” Ben said, dryly. “How did you guess?”

“You’re a terrible liar.” She finally exhaled and took  a long sip of tea, as if now that her suspicions had been confirmed, he could relax.

“I would have told you eventually.” He fiddled with the fork next to his plate. “I just didn’t know what to say.”

“Did you think I’d be disappointed?” She asked, quietly.

“Maybe.” He admitted. It was true; he didn’t care much what other people thought about his personal life, but for some reason, the thought of his mother – the mother who had brought him to Mass every week and given him condoms, along with a fierce admonition, at seventeen – being disappointed made him cringe.

“Ben,” His mother made an affectionate, exasperated noise. “I’m not. I was beginning to give up hope that I’d ever have a grandchild. Can I meet her?”

“I don’t think she’s ready for that.” Privately, Ben amended, _I’m not sure I’m ready for that._

“What do you mean?” Leia looked affronted.

“We’re not… we’re not together.” He hedged.

“Well, you can get back together.” Leia gave him an expectant look, obviously assuming they had broken up sometime between getting pregnant and finding out they were pregnant.

“We were _never_ together.”

“Ben.” She said his name flatly.

“You told me you weren’t disappointed.” He said, defensively.

Leia narrowed her eyes. “I’m not.”

Ben snorted in disbelief. “Okay, Mom.”

They fell silent as the water brought their food; she’d ordered for them in advance. She still knew all of his favorite foods – steak, Brussel sprouts, white rolls with liberal amounts of butter.

To assuage her, Ben said, finally, “Her name is Rey. You would like her.”

“What is she like?”

“Stubborn as fuck. Sorry.” He quickly apologized for his language, seeing the look on her face. “She drives me crazy. She’s smart and funny, but she’s so _difficult_.”

“You could always marry her.” She only sounded as if she was half-joking.

“That is a terrible idea.” Ben barked out a laugh, imagining Rey’s face if he proposed marriage to her.

Leia shrugged. “That’s what people used to do when they got pregnant. That’s what I did.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Leia shrugged again, this time almost helplessly. “I thought it was what was best for you.”

Ben struggled for a second. “I don’t think it was.”

He could tell he’d hurt her. She swallowed hard, cleared her throat, and collected herself while he looked down at his plate, shamed. Finally, she asked, diplomatically, “How are you feeling?”

“Scared.” He tried to smile, and failed. “I don’t know if it’s health for a kid to be shuffled back and forth between two parents and two houses. I don’t know if I’ll be any good at this.”

“If you’re already worried you aren’t going to be any good at it, you’re going to be good at it. Parenting is ninety percent worrying.” She could tell he didn’t believe him, and went on. “Ben, your problem was never that you didn’t care. Sometimes I think you just felt too much. I know your father and I…”

“Mom.” He cut her off with a look. “I don’t want to talk about Dad, okay?”

“Okay.” She sat back in her chair. “When’s the due date?”

“May 18th.” It was early December, and that date still seemed far away. Ben realized, with a little shock, that this would be the last Christmas he’d spend drinking with Hux and having dinner with his mother. Next year, he’d be unwrapping toys. It was a surreal realization. “She’s seventeen weeks.”

“You have plenty of time to work things out with Rey. Everything will be fine.” They stood up to put on their coats, and she wrapped him in a tight, unexpected hug. “And I’ll always be there to help.”

“Thank you.” He had to bend double to let her embrace him, but he still held on a little longer than he had in a long time.

She patted his cheek when they broke apart. “I have it easy, honey. I just have to love you, and the little one. You two have to do all the work.”

****

“How’s that co-parenting class going?”

“Fuck you, Hux.” Ben made a face. They’d retreated from the office to a bar, nursing the stress of a long week. Ben’s calendar prominently featured Rey the next day – second-trimester ultrasound and signing up for a breastfeeding class, since _of course_ she’d gotten her way when it came to breastfeeding – and that made him want to drink.

Hux cackled. “That bad?”

“Not that bad.” Ben conceded, swirling his drink in his glass. That week, the class had focused on ten-year plans. He’d discovered theirs were radically different. She wanted to have her own gallery, and she wanted to teach children about art at low-income schools. He wanted to rival Morgan Stanley and have a net worth of two billion. Neither of them had included parenthood in their ten-year plan, but it was somehow the one thing they had in common. “We’re finding out a lot about each other. For example, that we disagree on almost everything.”

“Such as?”

“Rey doesn’t want to find out the baby’s sex.”

“So?”

“I want to know. I need to make plans. And I’m not patient.”

“I know.” Hux observed. He popped the olive from his martini into his mouth. “Speaking of patience. I finally convinced Phas to move in.”

“What?” Ben almost spat out his drink. He knew they’d been sleeping together off and on for months, maybe even years, but he’d never stopped to consider whether their relationship was anything more than casual. “You should probably tell H.R. about this, not me.”

“I thought you should know. As a friend.” Hux looked almost nervous.

“Right.” Ben took a drink, wondering if this revelation was more or less surreal than his impending fatherhood. This was the man he’d run around town with, drunk and chasing skirt. He should have noticed Hux hadn’t had enthusiasm for those activities for a few months, but he hadn’t. He’d been too distracted by the changes in his own life. “I’m happy for you two.” The two men were silent for a moment, and then Ben added, “I guess you have to go home to her, then.”

“One more drink.” Hux clapped him on the shoulder, with a sympathetic expression on his pale face. “For old times sake.”

***

“Do you want to know out the sex?” Dr. Kanata paused the ultrasound wand over Rey’s stomach. Both parent’s eyes were glued to the screen – to the baby that was turnip-sized, according to Ben’s book – and it took them a moment to react to the question.

Ben made the effort not to speak on his own behalf before Rey could. When she didn’t speak, he gave the answer he thought she wanted. “No.”

“Yes.”

Ben whipped around to face her. She gave him a little smile from where she lay reclined on the table, shirt pulled up under her breasts, seventeen-week belly naked under the fluorescent lights and sticky with gel. It had swelled almost imperceptibly in her first trimester; now, in her second trimester, she had traded morning sickness for rapid expansion and lower back pain.

“Are you sure?”

“No.” She nibbled her lip. “But I think I need to. It’ll make it more real.”

“Okay.” Ben turned to Dr. Kanata. “Yes, we want to know.”

***

Ben bought a drink for a girl at a bar that night, out of the blue. She accepted it with a little smile. She was brunette, and athletic, and for some reason, she caught his eye. He wasn’t drunk, so he bought her a few more drinks and listened to her prattle about her master’s degree and her recently-single status.

At his penthouse, she kissed him in the kitchen. They made their way blindly to his bedroom and onto his bed, and her hands found their way to his shirt buttons.

“Wait, wait.” The words came out of his mouth, but he wasn’t sure if he’d said them. It was a somewhat out of body moment. When she pulled back, unsure of what he meant, he blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

The girl – was her name Rachel? – giggled nervously. “Too fast for you?”

“No, I just…” Ben floundered. He sat up on his heels. “I’m not looking for a relationship.”

“That’s okay.” The girl was still laughing. “No pressure.”

Ben looked at her face, wondering if he could remember any of the faces of all of women he’d had sex with. The only one he could recall with any certainty was Rey’s. He certainly wouldn’t remember this girl’s face in a few days. He wouldn’t remember what made her unique: her name or her college major or what had made her laugh. He heard himself speaking again, “I found out today that I’m going to have a daughter.”

“With your… girlfriend? Wife?” Suddenly, she wasn’t laughing anymore.

“None of the above.” Ben moved to sit on the edge of his bed.

“Oh.” The brunette looked even more confused at the turn the conversation had taken, if that was possible. She crawled across the mattress towards him, touching his shoulder. “Congratulations, I guess?”

“Thanks.” Ben laughed hopelessly. “I’m still processing it. Obviously.” He propped his elbows on his knees and started at the floor for a long moment.

“Hey. I’m still here.” She wrapped his tie around her hand from behind him and tried to tug him back towards the center of the bed.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” He unwound her fingers from his tie. “You’re someone’s daughter.” He added, almost to himself, in disbelief. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

They sat on opposite ends of the bed for a moment, and then the girl stood up with an exaggerated sigh, and picked up her shoes. Ben followed her to the door, hands in his pockets.

“I really am sorry.” He pulled out his cell-phone. “Let me have my driver take you home.”

“I’ll walk.”

“It’s late.” Ben argued, helplessly. “At least let me get you a cab.”

They rode the elevator in silence, and when Ben held the taxi’s door open for the girl, she turned back to him, with an utterly baffled expression on her face. “You are the strangest man I’ve ever met.” She softened a little. “But good for you.”

***

Ben’s phone rang at one in the morning, and he was still awake, alternately flipping channels and pacing around. “Rey?”

“Hey.” She paused, as if remembering something. “Are you alone?”

“Yes.” He didn’t bother telling her he was somewhat recently alone. He was still wrapping his head around what had just happened. He couldn’t understand his motivations, necessarily, but he knew there had been an overwhelming sense of guilt, looking down at that girl on his bed. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to let you know.” He could hear a smile in her voice over the phone. “I can feel the baby moving.”

“Really?” The girl – and his crisis of conscience – were forgotten. “What does it feel like?”

Rey hesitated over the line, and then said, “You can come over, if you want to feel it.”

“Is that… weird for you?” Ben asked, haltingly.

“This whole thing is weird.” Rey laughed. “Come over. I don’t want you to miss this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I envision Ben Solo being a Mama's boy. Obviously. 
> 
> P.S. I'd like to clarify that "she's someone's daughter!" should not be the reason to treat women with respect. Ben is just not totally evolved. He's working on it.
> 
> P.P.S. HUX AND PHASMA FOR LYFE.


	9. Chapter 9

"I'm in here!” Rey yelled, when she heard the door click open and the security system beep. After a pause, she heard heavy footsteps down the dark hall.

“I didn’t want to get up.” She said, by way of explanation, when Ben walked into the bedroom and stopped short, hands in pockets. He looked uncomfortable, and she wasn’t sure why. “I’m not sure if she’ll stop moving if I stand up.”

“Right.” He shifted on his toes, and then looked up at the ceiling. She could swear his cheeks pinked. “You aren’t wearing pants.”

“Oh.” Rey looked down. She’d kicked off her blankets, overheated, leaving her legs exposed. Her black underwear was bunched up under the swell of her lower belly and her faded Pratt Institute t-shirt was riding up on it, exposing a sliver of her stomach. “I got distracted.”

His eyes – she saw him sneak a glance at her underwear – went to her belly. “Is she still moving?”

“Yes.” She set her hand on her stomach, as if that might encourage the baby to keep fluttering around inside for a little longer. She saw Ben’s throat bob. “Do you want to feel it?” She asked, cautiously.

He wiped his hand, nervously, on the back of his pants, and moved an inch forward. He looked like an anxious fifteen-year-old boy who’d never been in a girl’s bedroom before. His voice cracked when he answered. “Yes.”

Rey rolled her eyes, and patted her stomach. “Come here, then.”

Ben planted his knee on the edge of her bed and sat heavily on it, folding one long leg under himself. His palm was big enough to span from the inner edge of one hip bone to the next when he set it tentatively on her stomach. Her belly rounded up into his hand, snugly. He waited for a second, obviously didn’t feel anything, and then, suddenly, to her surprise, her moved his hand under her shirt to lay it on her bare skin. His palm was very warm and surprisingly calloused for a blue-blood’s. Rey held her breath.

His brow creased for a second, as if he was focusing on something, and Rey was about to tell him focusing wouldn’t make the baby move again, when she felt it – the strange little tickle and thud inside her stomach, like a goldfish running itself against the side of a plastic bag.

“Was that it?” He looked up at her face, eyes wide.

“That was it.” She confirmed. “I got up to go to the bathroom and she just started doing it when I got back in bed. I didn’t really expect it until twenty weeks.”

“I knew she’d be a quick study.” Ben looked smug. He moved his hand gently across her nineteen-week stomach, his thumb drawing little circles. There was another little thump and flutter inside. The subsequent look on Ben’s face could only be described as awe. “Do you mind if I stay for a while? You can go back to sleep if you want.”

“I can’t sleep.” Rey stretched a little, wincing at the pull in her lower back. “She’s awake, so I’m awake.”

“Get used to it.” Ben teased. Rey groaned a little, letting her head hit the pillow.

“It’s a lot to get used to.” Her words were weightier than she’d intended them to be. They both fell silent for a minute, thinking of the countless sleepless nights in their futures.

With a gusty sigh of resignation, Ben leaned heavily on one arm, stretching his long legs out on the futon. They extended far past its end, and she realized the thin, lumpy mattress was almost comically too small for the both of them. His hand didn’t leave her belly, and he gave her a serious look. “Are you getting used to it, though? The idea of being a parent?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know this wasn’t part of your plan.”

“Yours, either.” She pointed out, dryly, remembering their co-parenting class two weeks ago. Ben shrugged, a strange gesture in his reclined position.

“I have something to prove though.” The fierce quality crept into his voice again, even as he traced a pattern on her stomach and stared intently at it. He sounded almost resentful. “You don’t. It’s not an abstract idea for you. You’re pregnant with her. You’re a mother already.

 “You don’t need to try so hard, you know.” She told him, softly. “You’ll love her when she gets here. That’s all that matters.”

“I’m not worried about whether I’ll love her.” Rey believed that; his warm hand on her stomach said _I already love her._ She’d seen his eyes in the emergency room. She saw the way he looked at her – or rather, at her stomach, she corrected herself. “I worry about being a good father.”

“Why?”

“My father wasn’t a good father.” He traced a little circle onto her belly, pushing her shirt up and out of the way so he could see it. “Not because he didn’t love me or because he was a drunk or anything. Just because he didn’t try. He wasn’t around. And then it was too late, you know.”

“I’m sorry.” Rey almost reached for his hair, to stroke it in a vaguely soothing way, but she stopped herself. Instead, she rested her hand very gently on his shoulder. “When did he pass?”

“He’s upstate.” Ben corrected her, and then added, blandly, when she gave him an odd look, “In prison.”

“Oh.” Rey tried to control her facial expression, but judging from the look on his face, she failed.

“You’re allowed to look shocked.” He told her, dryly. “It’s a well-kept family secret.”

Rey almost commented that she wasn’t family, and he didn’t need to tell her his family secrets, but she stopped herself. A part of her was curious; Ben was no longer a perfect stranger to her, but in some ways, he was. She’d long wondered what his motivations were, and she couldn’t resist the opportunity to poke and prod at them. “Why is he in prison?”

“Racketeering, this time.” He made an attempt at lightness, but his voice broke. “He’s been in and out since I was six. This time I think it’s for good, since he has cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that. I’m not.” Ben rolled onto his back next to her, and exhaled heavily. “I just want to do better. I want to be there. I don’t want anything else in my life to be more important than my kid.”

They stared at the ceiling together for a moment, and then Rey reached over and found his hand, blindly. She squeezed it.

”You’re going to be a good father, Ben.” Her voice got choked up with emotion, for some reason, so she cleared her throat and added a joke to diffuse it. “We still might kill each other, but you’re going to be a good father.”

He turned his face to look at her, holding onto her hand. He looked inexplicably tender. “You know, you drive me crazy, but I want our daughter to be like you, not me. You’re your own person.”

“I’m my own person because I don’t have anyone to compare myself to.” Rey told him, looking back up at the ceiling so she didn’t have to make eye contact at such close range during this conversation. “I didn’t have parents.”

“I know.”

“Of course you do.” Rey made a face. “Fucking private investigator.”

“I’m sorry.” He sounded sincere. “All the things the private investigator told me made me think you weren’t going to be a good mother. I was wrong.”

“You still don’t know that I’m going to be a good mother. I don’t know that, either.” Rey squeezed his fingers, and then let them go. “But I really believe if we both love her, everything else will work out. That’s all she really needs. That’s all I ever wanted.”

“That sounds like what my mother said.” Ben said, thoughtfully, at the ceiling. “You’re a lot like her, you know.”

“Is that a good thing?” Rey laughed.

“Yes.” Ben rolled back over onto his side, putting his arm around her belly and rubbing the rounded side of it, gently. Rey made an effort not to jump at the contact. Intellectually, she knew he was being affectionate with the baby, and not with her, but still, it was the first time they’d had physical contact since their rooftop encounter – with the exception of her slapping him. It felt surreal to feel his hands on her body again and she had half a mind to tell him to stop. She didn’t. He kept rubbing his open hand over the swell of her belly as he told her about his mother. “She was a stubborn, independent hard ass and she always tried her best, even though she was almost completely on her own. She was a wonderful mother.”

***

Rey woke up to the now-normal sensation – needing to visit the bathroom – and an unfamiliar one. It was the feeling of being cocooned, not just in blankets, but in someone’s arms. She opened her eyes suspiciously, and looked down, by habit, at her bump.

Ben’s arm was curled around her midsection, cradling it. His face was tucked against her breasts, his breathing soft and even and warm through her shirt. Their legs – hers bare, and his still in his slacks and polished dress shoes – tangled under the coverlet. He must have fallen asleep. By some miracle, she must have fallen asleep, even though she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks.

Even on her quiet street, she could hear traffic, and light was streaming through the blinds.

“Ben.” She wiggled her arm free of his weight, wincing as blood flowed back into it, and ran it, nervously, over the crown of his head, smoothing his mussed hair. “Ben.”

“Mmph.” The syllables came out in a hot whoosh against her breasts, and he nuzzled his nose deeper into them, grunting sleepily.

“ _Ben_.” This time, she smacked the back of his head instead of stroking it. He lifted it, with a startled expression on his face.

“What?” His hair stood up in all directions, and he looked at her, blearily, as if he barely recognized her. “What’s wrong?”

“I guess I didn’t set an alarm.” Rey tried to wiggle out from underneath him, but his limbs were still heavy with sleep. He looked at her like she was crazy and she explained, “It’s morning.”

“Fuck, I didn’t set an alarm.” Ben repeated her words, as if he hadn’t heard her. He rolled away from her, and stumbled out of bed. “I have to be in the office.” As he straightened up, he cursed, and reached around his body towards his lower back. “God, no wonder your back is sore all the time. That futon is awful.”

“My back is sore because I’m growing a human.” Rey told him, tartly, sitting up and gathering the sheets around her bare legs. “Don’t you dare take the bathroom first, I’m pregnant.”

He waited for her, begrudgingly, and then they stood at the sink together awkwardly, Rey brushing her teeth, Ben using a borrowed mouthful of mouthwash and trying to straighten his rumpled shirt, slacks, and hair.

His grumpy, first-thing-in-the-morning demeanor evaporated when he spotted something on her counter.

“Is this a vibrator?” He held it between two fingers, and swung it like a pendulum.

Rey flushed, trying to grab it out of his hands. “Stop it.”

“Pregnancy hormones got you down?” He was merciless, holding it above her head where she couldn’t reach it.  

“ _Yes_ , if you must know.” She wrested it away from him, scowling. “I can’t have sex and it’s _your_ fault so don’t you dare make fun of me.”

“Why can’t you have sex?” Ben looked baffled.

“Because I have a _baby bump_.” Rey put her hands on her hips, indignant. “It freaks men out. Well, I guess there are some men who are into it. But they have weird fetishes that I don’t care to explore.”

A devious grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “It doesn’t freak me out.”

“What?” Rey looked at him, confused. He wiggled his eyebrows.

“It’s my baby. The bump doesn’t freak me out.”

It took a moment for his words to register, and when they did, Rey was suddenly acutely aware that she was in just panties and a t-shirt, and that he was still a man. A man she had slept with. Her jaw flapped open. “Are you… are you coming on to me?”

“I’m just saying.” He looked totally unrepentant. “If your hormones are really out of control –.”

“Out. Now.” Rey pointed at the door. “Get _out_.” Her outrage wasn’t totally genuine, and she knew he could sense that. A part of her ego was soothed; being swollen up and sick all of the time made her feel less than desirable, and even if she couldn’t care less whether Ben Solo found her desirable, it a small, traitorous part of her liked his teasing. He knew it, too. He gave her a wicked grin and backed away, hands raised in mock surrender.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sniffs* is that... sexual tension I smell?


	10. Chapter 10

 

"I will never look at a vagina the same way again.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Rey scowled at Ben as they left their first childbirth class, bundled up on a frosty late January morning. She was twenty- five weeks pregnant, and her old coat didn’t fit her anymore. She’d vehemently refused to buy expensive maternity clothes, so she was wearing Finn’s old jacket, huge and ridiculous looking, but accommodating of the swell of her belly. Her walk was becoming more of a waddle, and she found it difficult to keep up with Ben as he strode down the street towards an idling taxi.

“I’m not being dramatic. That was _horrifying_.” Ben held open the door of the taxi, gesturing her in sarcastically. “Fifth and twenty-sixth, please.”

Rey thought about the video explaining contractions, and the image of an episiotomy, and burst into laughter. For some reason, she’d expected to learn about the Lamaze method, or something equally reassuring, but they hadn’t. “Okay, it _was_ horrifying. Remind me to tell Dr. Kanata I changed my mind about an epidural.”

Ben stopped short, twisting his body in the backseat of the cab, which seemed comically too small for his oversized limbs and her belly. “Are you sure? You said no drugs – ”

“Don’t.” Rey told him, flatly. “My vagina. My decision.”

“Fine.” He knew better than to argue with that, but she couldn’t resist adding,

“This is your fault for insisting on going to an absolutely _gory_ birth class.”

Ben snorted. “It can’t be worse than that breastfeeding class.”

“Breastfeeding is a beautiful bonding experience between mother and child.” Rey gave him an offended look.

“But that class was _incredibly_ awkward.” He made a face, doubtlessly remembering the words _comfortable hold_ and _perfect latch._

Rey sniffed. “Only because you see breasts as sexual objects.”

“Um, yes. I do.”

“Breasts are supposed to feed a baby.” Rey ignored the strange looks the cabby was giving them.

“And they’re also nice and soft.” Ben told her, straight-faced. “And fun to play with.”

“You’re a Neanderthal.”

“I think I’m pretty enlightened.” Now, it was his turn to sound offended. “I told you your baby bump wasn’t a deal breaker, if you ever want to work out some of the painfully obvious frustration that’s simmering right below the surface.”

“You’re _incorrigible_.” Rey muttered, turning to look out the window to hide her flushed cheeks. He hadn’t made any further advances on her in the six weeks since the morning after he’d fallen asleep in her bed, and so she’d brushed off his comments about her hormones as a joke. That said, there’d been a noticeable uptick in his merciless teasing of her. Sometimes, she thought he did it just to make her blush and scowl. “Why twenty-sixth and fifth?”

“I’m meeting Hux and Phasma for brunch.” He drummed his fingers on his knee, and added, “They asked if you wanted to come, you know.”

“Why?” Rey wrinkled her nose

“They’re curious about you.” He shrugged. “Or in Phasma’s case, just generally nosy.” He paused for a second, and then added, delicately, “I was going to ask them to be the baby’s godparents, though, so maybe you should –.”

“You still haven’t won the fight about baptism.” Rey observed, cutting him off. “I don’t really want to indoctrinate our child into a religion neither of us practices. Especially considering we aren’t married.”

“It would mean a lot to my mother.” Ben gave her a beseeching look. She knew, acknowledging the way he could turn his large, expressive eyes on her and make her waver, that she would be doomed if their daughter inherited his gaze.

Rey stuck her chin out. “She can tell me that herself, then.”

“You want to meet my mother.” Ben sounded deeply skeptical.

“If you want to leave the baby with her while you’re at work, then yes. I want to meet her and make sure I’m comfortable with that.”

“She raised me.” Ben pointed out.

“That is _not_ reassuring, Ben.” She was only half-serious; Ben possessed some qualities that she hoped were passed down to their daughter. Ambition, intelligence, generosity – yes. Just not those eyes.

Ben laughed, ruefully, drawing her out of her thoughts. “Touché.”

***

Hux and Phasma were an odd couple, Rey decided, by the time they, and Ben, were on their second mimosas. They were both tall, but she was as statuesque and effusive as he was slender and reserved. Phasma had a deep, melodious voice, and Hux a clipped, accented voice.

“Ben tells me you’re an artist.” Hux made the first foray into conversation with Rey. Until that moment, she’d smiled politely and sipped her water, not saying much. She felt somewhat ridiculous, surrounded by these well-heeled people drinking champagne and orange juice and talking about the stock market, when she looked decidedly unglamorous and pregnant. “And you’re teaching a sculpting class?”

Rey glanced at Ben. He studied the stem of his champagne flute, ignoring her. “Well, Ben made me sound a lot more accomplished than I am. I’m just volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club.”

“Didn’t you go to the Pratt Institute?”

“Oh – yes.” Rey wondered, for a moment, why he’d spoken about her to his friends. She was in a different plane of existence than they did, that much was obvious. That, and he spent time with them out of choice, and time with her out of paternal obligation.

“You must be very talented.” Hux had a very polite, stiff way of complimenting her, but Rey appreciated the effort.

“She does portraits. There’s this one of my face that is particularly… interesting.” The lilt in Ben’s voice tipped her off; he was teasing her.

“You have an _interesting_ face to draw.” Rey shot back, acidly. “Such _interesting_ bone structure.”

Phasma watched the exchange between them, grinning like the Cheshire cat, and then skipped all niceties. “So, Rey, are you taming our Ben?”

“Phas.” Ben warned her, the teasing tone suddenly gone from his voice. It almost seemed like he had touched on this subject with the tall blond before. She ignored him, plunging on with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop.

“He talks about you and the baby all the time, you know. Last week he rescheduled a board meeting to go to a breastfeeding class. And he gave up the occasional cigarette, leaving me to smoke alone on the terrace.”  Phasma told Rey, conspiratorially, leaning forward over the table.

“It’s bad for the baby.” Ben muttered into his mimosa.

 “The last time I saw him drunk he launched into a philosophical discussion about wanting to set a good example for his daughter,” Hux interjected. “And then went home alone.”

“A changed man.” Phasma nodded, sagely.

“Hey, fuck you. _Both_ of you.” Ben avoided Rey’s gaze, even as she glanced over at him. If he hadn’t been racking up a conspicuous amount of notches on his bedpost – and she’d been assuming he was –  he hadn’t let on. In fact, his incessant teasing and occasional inappropriate comment had led her to believe he was as red-blooded as ever. Part of her wondered when this alleged change had occurred. She hadn’t noticed any difference – but then again, she hadn’t been looking. Clearly, his friends, the ones who knew him best, had been. “Let’s change the subject.”

***

“Oh, and Ben.” Phasma stopped Ben and Rey before they walked out onto the curb, towards his waiting car, and gave him a little wink. “I really do have great taste.”

“What was that all about?” Rey asked, suspiciously, as they slid into the backseat of the Mercedes, infinitely more comfortable than the backseat of a cab, and headed downtown.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Ben.”

“I said, don’t worry about it.” He looked out the window pointedly.

“Tell me.”

“Oh, all right – the night we, you know – I walked up to you because… because Phasma said you were pretty.”

“Because Phasma said I was pretty.” Rey intoned. “Really? You expect me to believe that?”

“She bet me you’d blow me off.” He was turning pink, a rare and immensely enjoyable sight. He looked as if he wanted to hurl himself out of the back of the moving Mercedes into traffic.

“How much did she bet you?”

“Does it matter?”

“How much?”

“Five hundred.” Ben told her, weakly. He was looking at her like he expected her to be angry, but Rey couldn’t be. She was beyond being surprised by him, at this point. She pretended, for a second to be shocked, and then asked, dryly,

“So is getting me pregnant good for a thousand?”

Ben’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you for having a sense of humor about this. I thought you were going to start hitting me again and calling me an asshole.”

“I still might.” Rey told him, eyes narrowing. “Asshole.”

“You have to admit, though, it’s kind of poetic that she be the baby’s godmother.”

“Why, because she got us into this mess?”

“Well, we did that ourselves, if you remember.” Ben gave her an odd, short look, one that made her stomach knot itself up, before turning his gaze back out the smoky, tinted car window. “But yes. Remind me to thank her sometime.”

***

“Is that your husband?” The nine-year old whispered ridiculously loudly, standing on tip-toes to reach Rey’s ear.

Rey looked across the classroom. Ben waved, awkwardly, from the doorway. He was hopelessly out of place in his dark suit, surrounded by children splattered with clay and wearing over-sized aprons. Her own apron didn’t seem oversized; at twenty-seven weeks pregnant, it billowed out around her like a tent.

“I don’t have a husband.” She told the student. “That’s my… friend.”

“Why are you pregnant, then?”

“What?” She crouched lower, bracing herself on a nearby desk and steadying her other hand against her bump.

“Why are you pregnant if you don’t have a husband?” Huge, innocent eyes bored into her.

“I… I think that’s probably a question you should ask your mom and dad.” Rey kept her voice level and soothing. The nine-year-old gave a mistrustful look. “Go wash your hands, please.”

“You’re going to get that a lot.” Ben had crossed the room and overhead the end of her conversation. “And not just from kids.”

“I’m probably going to get that from _our_ kid.” Rey said, by way of answering. That was a bridge she wasn’t ready to cross yet; so she didn’t. “What’s up?”

“My mom wants to have dinner next week.” He shifted on his feet. “If you still want to meet her.”

“Okay.” She busied herself waving goodbye to each of her students, accepting occasional hugs – difficult, with her belly – and thanking parents as the classroom cleared out. Once it was empty, she stripped off her apron, balling it up and walking over to the sink. Keeping her voice casual, she said, with her back to him as she scrubbed paint brushes clean, “I’ve been thinking. When is your dad going to meet the baby?”

“He’s not going to.”

“Ben.” She exhaled heavily, scrubbing the brushes more vigorously than was really necessary. “She’ll be his only grandchild. I’m sure he wants to meet her.”

“He doesn’t even know I’m having a child.” Ben’s face was dark when she turned around to face him, leaning back on the sink for support. Her feet ached, and when she saw the pained, angry look on his face, her heart ached, too.

“How could you be so selfish?”

“Selfish?” Ben sputtered. “This is the man who thought it wasn’t important to straighten up so he could be there for his son. He missed birthdays, graduations – ” He stopped short, nostrils flaring with emotion, and then got himself under control. “We haven’t spoken in years.”

“I’m not talking about your father.” Rey crossed to the room to him, finding it somewhat impossible to stalk or stomp when he belly made her waddle. Still, she raised her voice. “I’m talking about our _daughter_. How could you deny her the chance to know her grandfather?”

“He was barely a father to me. He would only disappoint her.” Ben’s outburst of emotion had cooled. He sounded cold, now.  

“You’re being so unfair.” Rey felt herself getting red in the face. Her anger made her slightly light-headed, or maybe her blood sugar was just low. Either way, she swayed on her feet. “You want her to have the childhood _you_ never had, so you force me to sign an agreement saying we’ll pretend we’re a _happy family_ twice a week. But you won’t let _me_ give her what I think is important. I didn’t _have_ a family. I would have _killed_ to have a grandfather.”

“Stop projecting on our unborn child.” Ben snapped. “This is _my_ family we’re talking about. It’s none of your goddamn business.”

She raised her hand to slap him, and stopped herself, before he could. He looked at her, guardedly, as she made a herculean effort to still her bobbing throat and wobbling chin. Her voice was equally shaky when she spoke, but it grew stronger with conviction. “This is _our_ family. You wanted to raise this child together, so you don’t get to say it’s _your_ family. You can’t have it both ways.”

Ben looked at her for a long moment, eyes almost totally devoid of emotion or reaction, and then said, icily, "Fine, Rey. _Our_ family. But my father will be no part of it."

"Ben-"

"No. I don't want to talk about this anymore." His jaw clenched tightly. "Understood?"

Rey wiped a traitorous tear from her cheek, one she couldn't entirely blame on hormones, and spat out the word, feeling irrational anger and hopelessness flood her. She wanted to run away, to never see him again, in that moment, but she couldn't. She was tethered to him. He was the father of her child. She could never walk away, no matter how angry he made her feel, and so she had no leverage. "Understood." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woof. You didn't think it'd be all fluff and cuddles from now on, did you? Also, I tend to struggle a bit with plot-development heavy chapters, rather than character-development chapters, so I apologize if this chapter seemed stuctured oddly. I am *super* excited about the development in the next two chapters, though, so take that to mean what you will!


	11. Chapter 11

Ben’s mother was not what Rey had expected. She was, for one, _small._ Rey felt like she was carrying around a lead-filled basketball, at twenty-eight weeks pregnant, and she had a reoccurring nightmare about giving birth to an eleven-pound, future basketball player. Seeing Ben stand next to his diminutive mother made her cringe.

She had not only expected Leia Organa to be tall like Ben, she had expected her to be equally as intimidating. Leia Organa was not. She was as warm as Ben was cold – well, as Ben could seem cold, at first – and somehow, she put Rey at ease immediately.

“You are a much more beautiful pregnant woman than I was.” Leia said, bluntly, before she even introduced herself. “You must be Rey.” She hugged her, with surprising ferocity for her little frame, and impeded by the roundness of Rey’s stomach. Turning to her son, she said, teasingly, before she kissed his cheek. “You’d better hope the baby takes after her.”

“I do.” Ben said, quietly. Rey didn’t meet his eyes. They’d been driven to the restaurant in utter silence, each still silently fuming over their argument of last week. They hadn’t spoken to each other since that evening at the Boys and Girl’s Club.

Leia more than made up for her son’s taciturn silence as they ate. She barely touched her food. “Have you thought of a name?”

Rey saw Ben glance at her out of the corner of his eye and knew, just _knew_ , that he had an opinion about this. “No.” She set down her fork. “I want to meet her first.”

“I hope you don’t mind that I’ve been doing a little shopping.” Leia ventured. “Just some clothes and toys and things.”

“By a little, she means a lot.” Ben noted.

“This is my first grandchild.” Leia looked only slightly embarrassed. “I can’t help it.”

“This is your _only_ grandchild.” Ben muttered. “I’m having a vasectomy after this.”

“I don’t really want her to be an only child.” Rey heard herself speaking, but she wasn’t quite sure where the sentiment come from. “I always wanted siblings.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed, and she knew he was thinking about the possibility that his daughter would have half-siblings, and a stepfather one day. She held his gaze until he looked away, jaw tight.

Leia, as if sensing the tension, forged on to a new, but perhaps not totally unrelated, topic. “Are you seeing anyone, Rey?”

“No.” Rey gestured to her belly. “Bit difficult, with this.”

“It’ll be difficult with a newborn, too.” Leia observed, almost as if she was making a point.

“We’ve agreed to alternating weeks.” Ben’s voice took on a disapproving tone, as if he knew his mother was about to enter territory he wanted to steer clear of.  

Leia’s brow creased, and she sounded skeptical when she addressed her son. “You’re going to keep the baby overnight, for a week, while she’s still breastfeeding?”

“I can pump.” Rey said, uncertainly. She thought she saw Leia throw Ben a pointed look, and added, although she wasn’t sure why she was defending him, especially when she herself had myriad doubts about letting her week-old, breastfeeding child leave her sight for a minute, let alone a week, “We have an agreement.”

Leia looked exasperated. “You _know_ this would be easier if you just –”

“Mom.” Ben interrupted her. “Stop.” Turning to Rey, he said, bitingly, “My mother and father got married because she got pregnant with me. Since that turned out so well, she thinks that’s what we should do.”

“Oh.” Rey pinked. “That is…” She faltered, at a loss for words.

“A terrible idea.” Ben supplied.

“Yes.” She agreed, weakly. “We don’t even really _like_ each other.”

Ben laughed at that. Leia frowned at her, for the first time all evening. She turned her frown on Ben. “Sometimes I didn’t _like_ your father either. But we were Catholic, and we loved you and we liked…” She paused for a second. “I mean, obviously, we got pregnant somehow.”

“Mom.” Ben groaned. “Please stop.”

“I’m just saying.” Leia looked unperturbed by her son’s embarrassment. “Love is a choice.”

“So is abandoning your family.” Ben said, half into his glass of whisky.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Ben sounded testy.

“You are not your father, Ben.” Leia sounded angry, now. She stopped herself from going on, composed herself briefly, and then turned back to Rey, who was cowering on her end of the table, wishing she could disappear, obtrusive belly and all. “I’m sorry, Rey. But you’re family now, and _this_ is what this family does best, apparently.”

“Oh, believe me.” Ben downed his drink. “She’ll fit right in.”

***

They walked out to the curb, to the waiting Mercedes, in awkward, stiff silence. Ben opened the back door of the car, and then hung back. “He’ll take you home. I need to walk for a bit. Clear my head.”

“Oh. Well.” Rey thought about nagging him about the late hour, the rain, the cold, and thought better of it all. She doubted he’d listen to her. She wrapped her arms around herself, and said, stiffly, “Goodnight, then.”

“Rey.” She looked up at him from inside the back of the Mercedes. “My mother is right. The baby shouldn’t be away from you when you’re breastfeeding. You can…” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “She should stay with you. For the first six months.”

“Thank you.” Rey swallowed hard. “I… thank you.” A sense of relief swamped her, all of the sudden, and gratitude. They’d come to their agreement to alternate weeks months ago, when she’d had no concept of breastfeeding and what it would require. Now, she knew the schedule she’d have to keep, and she knew it wouldn’t fit within the schedule she’d agreed to with Ben. She’d been to afraid to suggest altering their agreement, afraid it would shatter their fragile peace.

“It’s what’s best for the baby.” He started to close the door.

“Ben.” She stopped him from shutting the door behind her.

“Yeah.” He leaned on the car, looking very tired.

“Your mother was right about something else.” She knew this wasn’t her place, but she went on. “You really aren’t your father.”

“I’m trying not to be.” He gave her a small, sad smile. For some reason, it wrenched at her heart, so she went on, impulsively.

“You can stay over, whenever you want. Every night, if you want. If you don’t get sick of being woken up by a screaming baby every three hours.” That got another little smile out of him.

“I’m buying you a real bed.” That was all he said, and then he shut the town car’s door and patted it, signaling the driver to pull away.

It wasn’t until she was a few blocks away that she wondered whether Ben had meant that when he slept at her brownstone, he’d sleep in her bed.

 ***

Fishkill Correctional Facility looked more beautiful than any prison had a right to be, Ben thought, and he had seen plenty of prisons. He’d visited his father in three prisons, to be precise, only rebelling against his mother and refusing to go when he’d turned fifteen. The custody order that had been in place had mandated he visit his father once every three months until he turned eighteen. His mother hadn’t had the heart to make him, though, when he cried and screamed that he hated him and hated going upstate. His father had sent a few letters, made a few phone calls, but had never enforced the custody order.

Despite its red-brick Victorian appearance, inside the barbed wire and brick walls, Fishkill was like any prison – smelly, chilly or hot, depending on the season, and humid. Ben followed the guard down eerily empty hallways to the visitation room, and paced nervously around the room as he waited. He hated the wobbly, all-plastic chairs in prisons, and he was too nervous to sit down.

He wished he hadn’t had to give up his cell phone to check into the visitation center; Rey was at her first third-trimester doctor’s appointment. It was the first one he’d missed. He’d called her and made some excuse on his way up the Hudson River Valley, and she’d sounded disappointed. That had surprised him.

Before he’d given up his phone, he’d looked at the picture she’d sent him that morning. She was all belly in the photo, the rest of her body almost comically small compared to her bulging midsection. He wondered who’d taken that photo.

“Ben?”

His father looked much smaller than he remembered him being, and much grayer.

“Hello.” He said, finally, stiffly.

“Is something wrong? Is your mother okay?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Ben didn’t move from his place across the room. His father shuffled over to the cafeteria-style table and sat down, waiting. If nothing else, years in prison had made him patient.

Finally, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and walked across the room. He slid the most recent ultrasound pictures across the table, without sitting down. His father picked them up, looked at them carefully, and then asked, “Boy? Girl?”

“Girl.”

“Will you sit down with me?”

Ben hesitated, and then sat.

“Is that why you’re here?” Han Solo gestured to the ultrasounds where they sat on the table, faced up. “Because you’re having a baby?”

“I’m not here for myself, if that’s what you mean.” Ben told him, stiffly.

“Did your mother make you come?” Han tried again. To be fair, that did sound like something Leia would do. Still, Ben shook his head. He tapped his finger on the ultrasound.

“ _Her_ mother wanted me to come.”

 “You’re married?”

“No.” Ben crossed his arms and leaned them on the table. “But she’s the mother of my child.” He didn’t get into specifics; he’d long suspected his father had been a philanderer, and he didn’t want to confirm that he himself had become one, too. “And she wants you to have some sort of relationship with our daughter.”

“What do _you_ want?’ He was remembering how gravelly his father’s voice was. He always sounded gruff, no matter what he was feeling.

“I won’t bring my daughter into a prison.” He said, by way of answering. He didn't really know what he wanted. Somehow, he'd just given the address to his driver, and gotten there, without planning to or thinking about why he felt compelled to. 

“I don’t expect you to.” Han traced the edge of the table. “I’m up for parole.”

“I don’t believe that.” Ben scoffed. He couldn’t count on one hand the number of times his father had been arrested. After the second time, his mother had filed for divorce, but he had kept count. “You’re a habitual offender.”

“Compassionate release.” Han explained, matter-of-factly. “Because of the cancer.”

Ben didn’t want to ask, both because he didn’t want to know the answer, and because he didn’t want to let on that he cared about the answer. His voice cracked. “How long do you have?”

“Maybe five years.” Han looked unbothered. “Long enough.” He picked up the ultrasound again, and studied it. “When is the due date?”

“Late May.”

“I could be out on parole by then.” Han said, quietly. “And I won’t be dead yet.”

Ben stared at his hands. It was very quiet in the room, the faint echoes of people in the hallways and yard nearby the only sounds. Finally, he said, “You can see her. With her mother there. But I don’t want to see you.”

He stood up, and walked towards the door. As he rapped on it with his knuckles, to summon the guard, his father said his name. He half turned.

“If you really didn’t want to see me, you didn’t have to come. You could have called or written.” His father looked hopeful, but also angry. He had no right to be angry, Ben thought.

“I came here to thank you.” His voice was clipped, so as not to reveal the emotional bruising behind it. “Thanks to you, you know, I think I’m going to be a good parent. I know what not to do.”

“Ben.”

The guard opened the door. “Ready to go?”

“Yes.” He didn’t want to turn back around, but part of him wanted the satisfaction of seeing that he’d hurt his father, and had his revenge for years of hurt. His father was holding up the ultrasounds.

“Can I keep these?”

Part of him wanted to rip the precious pictures out of his father’s hands, in spite. Instead, he turned on his heel and left. It was ironic, Ben thought, savagely, stomping down the windowless hallways in the guard’s wake, that his father would want those pictures. He’d never asked for any pictures of him, in all the time he’d been in prison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leia ships it. Duh. 
> 
> P.S. I know this is the ultimate slow burn, and some of you may be about to lose patience with me. But take heart! In the next chapter, there will be *whispers* adult content. My trash muse couldn't wait much longer.


	12. Chapter 12

_It was one of those dreams in which Rey was aware, at the back of her consciousness, that she was dreaming. It wasn’t a totally unfamiliar dream. Phantom lips eased up the inside of her thigh. She shivered and shuddered as they brushed against the nest of fuzz at the top of her thighs. His wet tongue parted her folds, and she sighed, arching her hips up. His mouth closed down over her, obligingly, even eagerly. He licked and suckled at her clitoris and made her moan in a voice that didn’t sound like hers. She looked down, in the dream, over the plane of a flat stomach, and watched a dark mop of hair moving back and forth, and side to side. She put her hand in that messy, dark hair, and tugged it, urging him:_ closer. More.

_When she pulled on his hair, the man raised his head from in between her legs. His chin was slick and he had a wicked, familiar grin on his face. He had Ben’s eyes._

***

Rey woke up with a start, eyes darting around her dark bedroom as if she was expecting to see someone there. She was alone, as always. Even alone, in the darkness, she flushed hotly, her embarrassment was acute. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut with a muffled, humiliated wail, and behind her eyelids, the image from the dream accosted her again.

What’s worse, there was a damp itch between her thighs, one she couldn’t quite scratch. That was not purely metaphorical – she could not, physically, reach it. When she rubbed her thighs together, desperately, they felt slick. She reached, awkwardly, around her belly, to soothe the hard, aching nub in between her legs. Maybe if she could get some relief from the throbbing, inconvenient arousal she’d woken up to, she could forget this had ever happened. She could forget she’d fantasized about Ben Solo.  She could get it out of her system with him being none the wiser.

It was hard to reach around the swell of her stomach. Going straight over it didn’t work – her arm wasn’t quite long enough – and going around it forced her wrist into an awkward position. With a gusty sigh, she withdrew her hand from her underwear and rested it on her midsection, frustrated.

In her mind’s eye, that wicked grin teased her. Rey tried again, craning her wrist to find the sensitive spot again, and let her mind wander as she rubbed it. Perhaps if she let it wander freely, her mind would settle on something less patently embarrassing. She catalogued through a few images and familiar fantasies, absently, and then settled onto something else. Something new. It was salacious and it made her breath come short, and it was _Ben_ doing it.

“God _damn_ it.” Rey took her traitorous hand out of her underwear and slapped it over her eyes. She lay there for a long moment, contemplating whether to take cold shower. Five months ago, she might have reached for her cell phone and texted an old fling, or maybe browsed a dating app. That she could no longer do that, at the beginning of her third trimester, was a foregone conclusion. It was the cruel irony of her pregnancy: her hormones were screaming at her, at the oddest and most inopportune times, just as her belly formed an effective barrier between her and sexual intimacy.

If she hadn’t felt so deeply self-conscious about her bump and if she wasn’t possessed of a moral compass, she would have called Finn. He liked her, she knew. Probably, he even loved her. That was why she couldn’t call him.

She hadn’t always made the best decisions, when it came to men. There had been men she’d led on, and men she’d regretted later. There’d been Ben, who’d gotten her pregnant after a one-night stand. Finn would take her at her word if she asked him to come over. He would come over, even though she was pregnant with Ben’s baby. And he would mean every word he said and do everything right. It wouldn’t be fair to him.

Unbidden, a memory came to her: Ben, holding her vibrator between two fingers, teasing her with it. Ben, implying he’d still sleep with her, despite her belly. Ben, not-so-subtly offering to do just that.

 _Ben_ knew sex was sometimes just sex. That, she knew for sure.

She hesitated for a second, and then reached for her cell-phone. In a moment of clarity and shame she threw it across the room, disgusted by herself. She looked at the ceiling, scolding herself, and thinking about her dream. She remembered, or imagined, his tongue teasing where her hand couldn’t quite reach and satisfy.

Rey crawled out of bed and got her cell phone. Their exchanged text messages were a litany of appointments, planning, and polite questions. She hesitated.

It was one in the morning. Even if Ben was comfortable with casual sex, this was still a bad idea. She couldn’t send him on his way in the morning and rest easy knowing they’d never see each other again.

Still.

 _Come over._ Two little words. She pressed _send_ before she could lose her nerve.

***

Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the door. It was a loud, persistent knock. Rey tip-toed down the hall. She couldn’t be drunk on alcohol, she hadn’t tasted any in months, but she _felt_ drunk. The risk and anticipation were intoxicating. She was drunk on hormones and her own boldness. She stumbled down the hallway to unlatch the door.

This was happening, and somehow, the thought was more arousing than the dream itself.

Ben almost fell through the door when it swung open. “Fuck.”

“Ben?” She jumped out of the way. He steadied himself against the wall, straightened up, and then almost toppled into her. This time, he braced himself on her shoulders, almost making her knees buckle with the weight and force of his large hands.

Ben looked down at her, grinning stupidly. It was a grin totally unlike the one she’d dreamed about, but it was endearing. Rey stood up on her toes, almost topping over with the weight of her belly and the force of his hands on her shoulders, and kissed him. She missed his mouth, her lips colliding with his chin.

When he kissed her back, he didn’t miss. His mouth was wide open and hot and it tasted like vodka. It was the first time they’d kissed, she thought, absently, or was it? She couldn’t remember if she’d kissed him that night on the roof. If she had, certainly he would have tasted like alcohol then, too.

“Are you drunk?” She pulled away, after a second. He chased her, crushing his mouth against hers again. It was the kind of kiss she’d fantasized about, and it wasn’t. She’d dreamt of him being ravenous, but she hadn’t dreamt of him being drunk. His kiss was as overpowering as she’d wanted it to be, but it wasn’t meticulous in the least. It was messy.

“Yes.” He said the word against her mouth. She felt it echo in his chest, smashed against hers.

Sinking down onto the flats of her feet, Rey tried to pull away. His hands were in her hair, wrapped around the nape of her neck, and she couldn’t get very far. “Ben, slow down.”

“You’re so beautiful pregnant.” Ben stopped kissing her, but he didn’t let her go. His mouth worked sloppily down her neck, leaving a trail of moisture, starting behind her ear. She trembled, nerve endings firing involuntarily. “It _does_ something to me. I don’t think it’s just the boobs. But the boobs are good.” One of his hands moved down to the small of her back and then up and around her body, past the swell of her midsection and to her engorged breast. It was sore, and he cupped it a little too hard, kissing under her jawline.

“Ben, stop it.” She could feel the distinct pressure of his erection against her belly. It would have been pleasantly thrilling, in any other circumstance. “You’re too drunk.”

“I’m drunk. I’m not _too_ drunk.” He slurred a little. “I can still get it up.” He ground his pelvis against her, as if to prove a point.

“Yes, I can see that.” Rey planted her hands on his chest and pushed him away forcefully, her ardor utterly cooled by his sloppiness. He stared her down, panting. His mouth hung open and his lips were slicked from kissing her. She remembered his mouth in the dream slicked from the moisture between her legs, and turned red. This had been, she acknowledged, with a sinking feeling, a terrible mistake. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“Yes, please.” He wiggled his brows, and slung an arm around her shoulders, leaning heavily on her. They made their way down the hallway very slowly. The second or third time he almost knocked her over, Rey let go of her disappointment and embarrassment, and began silently fuming

In her bedroom, he flopped, theatrically, onto her futon. Rey rolled her eyes, and took off his shoes, carefully setting them aside. He watched her drowsily, laying on his back, eyes unfocused. When she had peeled off his socks, he reached for his belt and starting to fumble with it, clumsily. “Fuck. Help.”

“Not tonight, Ben.”

He didn’t seem to have heard her. He kept trying to take off his pants, and failing spectacularly. When she unfastened his tie, he gave up on the belt, wrapped his hands around her wrists and pulled her towards him. “Am I really that drunk?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t stop you last time.” He licked his lips, his eyes trained on her mouth. Those lips were still, on some level, tempting. She knew better, now, though.

“A lot has changed.” Rey turned off the light, and stood over him. She wasn't sure why her anger and disappointment were so acute. She'd wanted casual sex, to scratch an unexplainable itch. It shouldn't have mattered that he was drunk, if that was all she wanted. It probably would have even been better. Maybe he wouldn't have even remembered it in the morning. “Go to sleep.”

“Come here.” He mumbled, face half-buried in the pillow. It wasn’t until she heard him snoring that she obeyed.

***

The splitting headache Ben woke up with was punishment enough. The searing sense of shame was a bonus he hadn’t anticipated. He tried to sit up, groaned, and laid back down, pressing the heels of his palms against his eye sockets.

“I made you breakfast.” He lifted one hand to see Rey come into the bedroom, carrying a bowl and a mug. He was about to wonder aloud why she was being so nice to him when she added, tartly, “Regret, with a side of judgment.”

“Oh.” He took the coffee from her, slowly. Almost to himself, he added, ruefully, “Fuck me.”

“Wrong choice of words.” Rey told him, dryly.

“Right.” Ben almost choked on the coffee. He felt his ears heat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rey move over the window and examine the view of the courtyard with ferocious intensity.

“Sorry I didn’t do that.” She spoke, haltingly. “Fuck you, I mean.”

“Sorry I showed up drunk.” He responded, hanging his head. He traced a loose thread on the futon’s mattress and remembered his promise to buy a nicer bed. When he’d made it, he’d been sure she’d think him presumptuous. Perhaps she hadn’t, if last night’s unexpected text message was any indication. “Would you… would you have, if I hadn’t been drunk?”

“Yes.” Rey admitted, still looking out the window. She turned back to him, and made a strained joke. “It was a moment of weakness.”

“You’re allowed to be weak, sometimes.” He thought about her resolve, and stubbornness. It annoyed him, most of the time. She was hard-edged and difficult. But he knew it was her inherent strength that made her the way she was. In a sense, he admired her for it. He wondered what it was that had made her weak.

Apparently, she wondered the same thing. They were silent for a minute, and then Rey said, quietly, “But you can’t keep doing this. When the baby is born.”

“I know.” He looked down at the dark void of his coffee. He tried to remember how many drinks he’d had the night before, and he couldn’t. He’d been alone in his apartment, and the ghost of his father. “I’ve been… better, recently. I just wasn’t last night.”

“What happened?” Rey sat gingerly on the edge of the futon.

“I went to go see my dad.”

Her back stiffened. “What?”

“Upstate.” Ben added, unnecessarily.

“Why did you do that?” She looked genuinely confused, as if he was the last person she ever expected to compromise or have a change of heart.

“Because… you wanted me to.” He told her, lamely. He couldn’t think of a better explanation. Surely there _was_ one, but he wasn’t feeling particularly introspective.

Rey’s brow creased even deeper. “Since when do you do things just because I want you to?”

“I came over last night, didn’t I?” He saw her cheeks darken. “Why did you call me, anyways?”

“You… offered.” She stumbled over the word. “And I’m lonely.”

“You don’t have to be lonely.” He told her, gruffly.

A sad smile flitted across her lips. “And you don’t have to drink so much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I'm a tease. These kids cannot seem to get their act together.


	13. Chapter 13

Rey trotted – waddled, really – across the parquet floors to her front door. She was expecting Finn, and fried chicken and pickles – a recent, and unexpected craving. Unbolting the door, she swung it open without looking out the peephole.

“Hey, Fi – oh.” Rey stopped short. Leia Organa stood on her doorstep, carrying two large bags that seemed scaled too large for her stature. “Hello.”

“I hope it’s not an inconvenient time.” Leia said, brightly. “I thought I’d drop by with some things for the baby.” She arched a brow, looking oddly excited. “Were you expecting someone?”

“Yes, but it’s all right.” Rey moved aside, awkwardly, and then moved aside even more, remembering that her belly could, by itself, block the door.

“Ben?” Leia prodded, a little too eagerly, as she swept in.

“No.” Rey followed Ben’s mother into the living room. “A friend.”

Leia seemed disappointed, but she forgot that quickly. She peered around the nearly empty living room, brow furrowing. “Did you just move in?”

“Oh.” Rey glanced around. Her old futon had taken up residence in the living room, standing comically alone, yesterday. In its old place in her bedroom was a ludicrously large bed, low to the ground and wide enough for her to lay horizontally on it, delivered yesterday by an unannounced truck. Tucked into the corner was her desk, and canvases leaned against nearly every surface, but otherwise, the living room was bare. “No.”

“This is a beautiful apartment. Tell my son to buy you some furniture, for God’s sake.” Leia tutted, setting down the bags in any old place and then looking around, hands on her hips. “He has enough money.”

“He doesn’t need to buy me anything.” Rey sounded defensive, despite her best efforts to be polite. She tried to explain, apologetically. “It’s not necessary. It makes me… uncomfortable. When he spends money on me.”

“My dear,” Leia looked almost amused. “My son is many things, but _good with women_ is not one of those things.”

“He seems to do just fine.” Rey corrected her, sardonically, before remembering this was Ben’s mother she was talking to. She pinked, but Leia didn’t seem bothered.

“He’s never had anyone to take care of before. He’s still learning how to, without smothering you. You have to _let_ him learn by trial and error.”

“He doesn’t _need_ to take care of me. We aren’t in a relationship.” Rey mumbled. She thought about their last interaction, and couldn’t help but pink a little more. This conversation was becoming more uncomfortable by the minute.

“Yes, you are.” Leia insisted. “You’re the mother of his child.” She sounded serious, now, rather than bemused. “He’ll _never_ _have_ a more serious relationship. When you share a child, you share something permanent and profound, even if you go your separate ways.” She spoke as if from experience, and she looked almost sad.

“He might get married.” Rey hedged.

Leia gave her a meaningful look, one that made her gulp. “I wish he would.”

The doorbell rang before Rey could stumble over her words or change the subject. Relieved, she muttered an excuse and let Finn in. Gesturing between the two people in her living room, she said, awkwardly, “Finn, this is Ben’s mother, Leia.”

The two regarded each other with no small amount of suspicion. Leia hid hers better, shaking Finn’s hand and saying, “It’s so nice to meet one of Rey’s _friends_.” Finn gave Rey a sidelong glance at the emphasis on that word.

“Finn’s going to be the baby’s godfather.” Rey chimed in, coming to her _friend’s_ defense.

“Oh.” Leia looked more genuinely pleased, now. “I’m so pleased you decided to baptize her.”

Rey smiled blandly, wondering whether telling Ben how happy his mother was would soften the blow of Finn being named their daughter’s godfather, instead of Hux. He would pitch a fit, probably. She would leave that fight for another day.

“I’m not Catholic.” Finn interjected, grinning. Leia’s smile faded at that admission, and faded even more when Finn put his arm around Rey’s shoulders. “But for my best girl, I can pretend to be.”

***

“You know why.” Ben told her, flatly, when she told him how Leia had reacted to Finn. They were sorting through the clothes Leia had brought, clipping off tags, folding the diminutive shirts and onesies, and tucking them away into the drawers of the brand-new dresser that still smelled like fresh wood. “She’s hoping you’ll change your mind about me.”

“I already have changed my mind about you.” Rey said, lightly. “You’re not a complete asshole.”

Ben laughed at that, but didn’t retaliate. “She’s hoping you’ll marry me.”

“I gathered that.” Rey said, wryly. They continued folding clothes in companionable silence, neither much bothered by the topic of conversation. When Leia brought up marriage, Rey flushed and stuttered. When she relaying the story to Ben, it was with the kind of comfortable, unselfconscious humor that had characterized their interactions for weeks, when they weren’t arguing.

 _Nesting._ That was what they were doing, Rey realized, as she watched Ben fold little socks up with a look of utter concentration. She knew pregnant women got an inexplicable urge to create a warm, well-stocked place to bring their baby home to.

Ben seemed to be afflicted by this phenomenon. Last week, after he’d left the office, he’d brought an offering of ten bags of groceries, and stocked up her bare refrigerator and pantry. His excuse had been that she wouldn’t want to leave the house with a newborn right away. She’d rolled her eyes. Another night, he’d brought a box of baby books and built a shelf for them, working late into the night. Tonight, he’d brought over a somewhat terrifying contraption – a motorized baby swing. “It got good reviews.” He’d told her, defensively, when he saw her eyeing it with mistrust.

 “Thank you for the bed, by the way.” That recent delivery was for her, not the baby, although she still wasn’t sure if it was _only_ for her.

“Only a masochist would sleep on that futon.” Ben made a face. “And I, unlike you, am not a masochist.”

“Who says you aren’t sleeping on the couch, when you stay over?” Rey challenged him, mostly because she wanted to _know_ , getting to her feet with a little difficulty so they weren’t sitting so close. Ben’s arm shot out to help her, and then withdrew just as quickly, as if he was embarrassed.

“You don’t _own_ a couch.” He clambered to his feet after her.

“I have the futon.”

“Exactly.” Ben left the nursery, and she followed him. “And I’m not sleeping on that thing.” To her surprise, he went into her bedroom, as if he owned the place – well, he did, but _still_. Rey glared at him. Flopping down onto the bed, he rubbed the length of his body along the mattress with an ecstatic groan. “This is much better.”

“Get off my bed.” She tried her best to sound stern.

“ _Your_ bed?” Ben bounced his weight up and down on the bed, stretching out his impossibly long limbs with a cocky grin. She had to admit, this bed was much more suited to his size than to hers. “ _My_ bed.”

“No, it’s not.” Rey sputtered, indignant. “It’s mine.”

“Fine, it’s yours.” He sat up and caught her wrists, tugging her towards the bed so she was standing between his spread knees. “On one condition. You let me sleep in it.”

“I’m not going to sleep with you.” Rey told him, primly, trying to keep her voice under control. It hitched despite her best efforts, and he looked smug, as if he could tell the effect he was having on her.

“You don’t have to sleep _with_ me. You can just sleep in the same bed as me.” He tugged a little harder, wrapping one arm around her waist and trying to pull her onto the bed with him. “Come here.”

“Ben.” Rey tried to pull away, and failed. She swore as she lost her balance and tilted towards the bed, but Ben caught her, very gently bracing her, his hands splayed across her ribcage. He twisted, wrapping an arm around her midsection, and settled her onto her back on the mattress, hovering half over her.

 “This isn’t so bad, is it?” He looked down at her, eyes warm and humorous.

“You know, this bed is really big.” She sounded humiliatingly breathless. “We don’t have to be this close.” They were _close_ , their faces mere inches apart. His hair was hanging in his face, making him look very boyish. His eyes broke with hers, and his gaze settled onto her mouth.

“Can I kiss you?” Ben asked, so softly, and in such a low timbre that she barely heard him. He must have seen something cross her face, some trepidation, because he added, hastily, in a louder voice, “Your stomach, I mean.”

Rey nodded, unable to speak. He slid down the bed, his legs not sliding off the mattress, this time. His hand smoothed up her shirt to expose a strip of skin. He studied her for a second, and then pressed a soft, sweet kiss onto her belly, and rested his forehead against that same spot. His breath tickled a little bit, but Rey smiled down at the crown of his head, nonetheless.

When he’d asked to kiss her, she’d felt a spike of panic. But she felt inexplicably tender towards him when he was like this, looking at her burgeoning belly with awe and what could only be described as adoration. It gave her a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach. It made her wonder what she would feel when she saw him holding their newborn child. She bit her lip to try to hide her smile, glad he was too preoccupied to look up at her.

But he did look up. He looked up, and a slow smile spread across his face, echoing the one Rey knew she wore. She stopped trying to hide hers.

Ben crawled up the bed alongside Rey’s body, keeping one hand on her belly, his eyes trained on hers. There was no mistaking his intent. When his face was level with hers, he kissed her without hesitation. His mouth was very soft and warm. He didn’t taste like alcohol this time, and he wasn’t rushed or sloppy. His thumb moved across her cheek and into her hair as he tasted her. Of its own accord, Rey’s arm curled around his neck, pulling him closer, as she opened her mouth. He sighed into it, pressing his tongue against hers.

“Ben.” She whispered his name when they came up for air. Her lips caught on his as she said it.

“Yes?” His voice cracked.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought it was pretty obvious.” Ben’s nose brushed the hollow under her eye as he planted a feather-light kiss to her cheek. He pecked kisses across her check back to her mouth, and kissed her again. Rey wound her fingers into the baby hairs at the back of his neck, tugging on them gently. He kissed her curiously, slowly, as if they had all the time in the world, as if they might just lie there and kiss all night and he would be satisfied with that. 

Suddenly, she yanked those silky, short hairs tightly. Uncomfortable pressure built at the top of her abdomen, and rushed downwards, almost like a cramp. Rey sucked in a lungful of air from the scant space between her lips and Ben’s, and held it, dizzied, while her belly spasmed.

He’d felt it too. His voice pitched upwards as they broke apart. “What was that?”

Rey exhaled sharply as her muscles relaxed just slightly, and made a muffled noise as they seized back up. “I think I’m having contractions.”

Ben was on his feet in a second, panic crossing his features. “It’s too early. We need to go to the hospital.”

“They’re probably just Braxton Hicks contractions.” Rey sat up, hand fluttered to her bump. Her gut twisted uncomfortably, both from nerves and from another muscle spasm.

“I’m calling Dr. Kanata.”

“Ben, it’s late.”

He ignored her, dialing the number and putting the phone up to his ear. “She said to call her personal cell phone if there’s ever an emergency.”

“This isn’t an _emergency_ , Ben.”

He didn’t respond. When Dr. Kanata picked up the phone, he started to launch into an explanation, and then stopped short, and held out the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”

***

“So.” Ben turned red, after she hung up the phone. He’d listened to the entire conversation, pacing around her bedroom. “Braxton Hicks.”

“Braxton Hicks.” Rey affirmed. He huffed, trying to pretend to be exasperated, but she could tell he was still on edge. She grabbed his hand from her seat on the bed, and he looked at her, surprised. She could feel his pulse fluttering frantically in his wrist. “She said taking a hot bath might help to relax.”  

Ben nodded, distractedly. “Okay.”

“Might help _you_ relax.” Rey added, pointedly.

“I’m fine.” Ben huffed, unconvincingly. 

“You freaked out.” She pointed out, gently. When he didn't answer, she squeezed his hand. "It's okay to be scared."

"I'm not scared." Ben said, sharply - too sharply. He was silent, for a moment, and then said, more apologetically, "I don't think I can... whatever it is we were about to do."

"No, I... understand." Rey smoothed her hands over her stomach, nervously. "Kind of ruins the mood."

They were silent for a moment, and Rey wondered whether he'd leave and whether they'd pretend they hadn't kissed. Then Ben said, huskily, voice thick with stress and emotion, "I don't want to leave you alone tonight, though."

Rey regarded him. He was pale, still. Shaken. She would be fine alone, even after the scare they'd had. She always had been. It was _Ben_ who didn't want to be alone, or rather, away from her and the baby. "Then stay." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving, American friends! I am thankful for your continued readership, support, and feedback. If you comment, you *are* heard - Finn being the godfather, and Leia coming over to Rey's house were both reader suggustions that I liked so much, I decided to incorporate them! So let me know what you want to see. You just might!


	14. Chapter 14

Rey woke up before her alarm went off – she wasn’t sure why she bothered setting an alarm, now that she didn’t have to be at the coffee shop, but she was a creature of habit, and she’d always been a morning person. At first, she thought Ben had left. She vaguely remembered rolling over in the middle of the night and feeling the iron band of his forearm wrapping snugly around her ribcage, right between her breasts and her belly. His breathing had been very even in her ear, and the solid, warm mass of his body behind her somewhat comforting.

Ben’s arm wasn’t holding her snugly against his stomach and chest, now, but he hadn’t left. He was laying halfway down the bed, propped up on one elbow, his face level with her belly. He was talking, so quietly she couldn’t hear him even from the head of the bed.

“Ben.” She reached, instinctively, for his hair, as she said his name. He turned his cheek into her open palm, almost resting it against her hand.

“Good morning.” She felt his jaw move against her fingers as he spoke.

“What are you saying to her?” Rey gestured towards her stomach with her chin. His lips quirked.

“Nothing.”

“You woke me up.” Rey informed him, implying that he had been saying _something_.

“I didn’t mean to.” He shifted on the bed, onto his back, and scooted up to lay level with her, his head on the pillow. His hair fanned out like a messy halo. He changed the subject, smoothly. “Can you come by my office today? I need you to sign some paperwork.” Rey stiffened, despite herself. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, and rolled onto his side to face her, tucking his big hands under the side of his face.

“What kind of paperwork?” Rey curled herself up in a ball, mirroring his pose. She was still suspicious, even though she, apparently, trusted him implicitly enough to share a bed with him.

“I had my lawyers form a trust. If something happens to me, all my assets will pour over into it.” He sounded nonchalant, as if this was normal pillow talk. “I want to make you the trustee.”

“I don’t want to handle your money.” Rey wrinkled her nose. “Why don’t you make Hux the trustee, or Phasma?”

Ben blinked at her, as if she was being obtuse. “It’s for the baby. There’s no one I trust more than you to do what’s best for her.”

It was Rey’s turn to blink now, although for a different reason. Her eyes pricked. Part of her had thought that the paperwork was something to be feared. The last time he’d asked her to sign paperwork, they’d come close to the precipice of a custody battle. Their current arrangement had been written on scratch paper, and had mutated into something different, over the months. She felt secure when they were like this – coexisting peacefully, if not happily – but insecure every time they argued. When they did, it was because they didn’t agree on what was best for the baby, and usually, she lost. Usually, she lost because she ran up against his unwillingness to compromise and was afraid that if she pushed him too far, he’d snap.

Something softened in Ben’s eyes when hers welled up. He laid his open hand very lightly on her cheek. “Did you really think the paperwork was something bad?”

Rey was mute. She knew, instinctively, that if she admitted she’d had her doubts, however justified they were, he’d be hurt and withdraw. He might have known, anyways, from her silence. A moment ago, she’d wondered if he might kiss her again. Now, he gave her an inscrutable look, and got out of bed.  

***

“Mr. Solo.” Dopheld Mitaka breached the door of his office, looking, as always, slightly nervous. “Mr. Snoke is on line one.”

Ben’s head snapped up. Mr. Snoke, founder, president, and chief operating officer of the corporation of which First Order Investments was a wholly owned subsidiary, was doubtlessly calling from the top floor of a skyscraper in London, and he would not wait. Ben abruptly told the person he was speaking to that he would call them back, and took the call. “Yes, sir.”

“I need you in London.” Mr. Snoke was not one for pleasantries.

Ben glanced at the desk calendar under his hand. Monday of the next week was marked with neat letters – a doctor’s appointment, at thirty-three weeks. “For the week, sir?”

“For the foreseeable future.”

“My.…” Ben stopped short, wondering what word to use. Finally, he settled on a white lie. Better to use it, then to explain his complicated personal life to Mr. Snoke. Mr. Snoke did not care to hear about his personal life at all, and especially not when it could be considered a distraction. “My girlfriend is thirty-two weeks pregnant.”

“I’ll be sure to buy cigars.” Snoke told him, coolly. “I’ll see you in my office on Monday.”

The line clicked, and went static.

***

“Mr. Solo.” Dopheld Mitaka poked his head into the room, again, this time looking well and truly nervous, and for good reason. Ben’s temper was famous, and out in full force. He’d thrown his phone across the room, knocked a pile of papers off of his desk, and shouted an obscenity.

“ _What_?” Ben barked.

“Miss Kenobi is here.” Dopheld’s voice barely held steady. Rey peered around his shoulder, hazel eyes wide.

“I told you to put her on the list.” Ben snapped. “You don’t need to interrupt me to tell me she’s here.”

“I didn’t think it wise to send her into your office with her in this condition and you in… yours.” Mitaka looked almost shocked that he’d been brave enough to say that. Ben stared at him, nostrils flaring, and then gestured vaguely, and turned back to his desk.

“Who’s a son of a bitch?” Rey asked, lightly, after she closed the door. She kept her distance.

“What?” Ben frowned at her.

“That’s what you yelled. Just before I came in.” Rey kept a straight face, but he had the distinct impression she was scolding him.

“You heard that.” He stated, flatly.

“I think everyone in lower Manhattan heard that.” Rey commented. She glanced around the office. “Stock market down?”

“I have to fly to London next week.” Ben sat heavily in his chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

Rey sat gingerly in the chair across from his desk, hands settling onto her bump. Despite his black mood, Ben found himself staring at her hands on her belly. It was oddly soothing – and, simultaneously, terrifying – to look at her stroke her hands absently over it.

Had it been that big the last time he’d looked at her? Surely it had, but still, it was a shock, and a thrill, every time. Rey was starting to look very full, not fat, but _full._ It suited her well, in his opinion, and that was an opinion he’d never expected himself to hold. He’d surprised himself by fantasizing about her, specifically her _pregnant_ , more than once. Afterwards, he’d had to talk himself down, telling himself it was natural. Evolutionary, even.

“I think I can handle going to a doctor’s appointment by myself.” Rey was talking; he forced himself to pay attention.

“I’m going to miss more than one doctor’s appointment.” Ben admitted.

Rey’s face fell for a second, and she didn’t recover it right away. It was strangely satisfying to know that she wanted him there, would miss him even. “I’m full term in five weeks.”

“I know.”

She collected herself. Her hand splayed out over her belly, and even though there was a desk between them, Ben wished he could cover her hand with his. This time, she talked to the baby. It was the first time he’d heard her do that. Her voice took on a totally different tone, one that he didn’t recognize, but one that sounded familiar because it sounded like a _mother’s_ voice. “We can wait for Daddy, can’t we?”

***

Ben had just checked into his hotel in London when Rey called. She’d just left her thirty-three week appointment. “The baby is growing _hair_ now.”

Ben sat down on the foot of the bed, and wondered silently whether that hair would be a thick, black thatch, like his, or silky, chestnut waves, like Rey’s. He didn’t really know what to say. He felt equal parts excluded and guilty, as if he was both being left out of something, and letting her down. “Okay.”

“How’s London?” She changed the subject, sounding disappointed that he wasn’t as enthusiastic about hair as she’d been. In truth, he just didn’t know what to say. What he’d feared most was being an absentee father, and sitting in a hotel room across the Atlantic, he felt like one.

***

At thirty-four weeks, Rey told him that the baby’s eyes were closed when she was asleep, and open when she was awake, and that she had long, sharp fingernails. She hadn’t turned head-down yet.

“She’s waiting for you.” She said, confidently.

***

When Rey called in the thirty-fifth week, she sounded a little out of breath. “She’s kind of pushing up against my ribs. And she’s getting chubby.” She paused. “I saw her on the sonogram today.”

Ben curled his hand into a fist, a stronger sense of loathing than he’d ever felt coming over him as he looked across the hall into Mr. Snoke’s office. The old man was laughing, tilted back in chair, on the telephone. He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world.

Rey sounded smug when she said the baby had passed the kick count with flying colors – ten discernable movements in forty minutes. Ben wondered what the kicks and punches felt like now – probably not like a goldish in a bag, like they had the last time he’d touched her stomach. He wondered if he’d miss feeling them entirely.

***

“I can see her foot poking out of my stomach.” Rey blurted out, over the telephone, at thirty-six weeks pregnant. The baby still hadn’t dropped down into the birth canal, and Ben still hadn’t been told he could fly home to New York.

“I wish I could see it.” Ben sounded sullen, and tired.

“No, you don’t. It’s gross. It’s like something from _Alien_.”

“Still. I wish I was there.”

***

Thirty-seven weeks marked a full-term pregnancy, and Ben waited with baited breath for Rey’s phone call. Part of him expected her to sally forth into labor the moment she was full term. He exhaled in relief when she told him the baby had dropped, but her cervix hadn’t dilated or thinned at all.

“We can wait.” She didn’t sound quite as sure this time. “When can you come home?”

****

Rey’s doorbell rang late in the evening, halfway through the thirty-seventh week. She opened it a crack, peering out into the twilight of the early summer.

Ben stood outside, looking as disheveled and exhausted as she’d ever seen him. He stared at her as if he didn’t recognize her. Rey couldn’t blame him, if that was the case. She barely recognized herself. She had dark circles under her eyes from waking up to rush to the bathroom thrice a night, she was walking half-hunched over most of time because her back ached, and she couldn’t see her own feet. She looked like hell.

They spoke at the same time.

“You’re huge.”

“You’re here.”

Both stopped short, embarrassed, and then tried again, their faces red.

“You look beautiful.”

“You got to come home?”

“I left.” Ben answered, simply. “I’ll deal with the consequences of that later.” He stepped closer. “You really do look beautiful.”

“And huge.” Rey added.

“I’m sorry.” He gave an exhausted little laugh. “I’m tired. I’m not thinking straight.” He looked down at her belly – huge really was the right word, Rey thought, even if she’d only gained thirty pounds. She couldn’t feel self-conscious, though, when he looked at her like that.

“I’m glad you’re here.” Rey said, finally. That was an understatement. She felt exhausted, relieved, emotional, anxious, excited, impatient, and, now that he was here, _ready_.

His throat bobbed, and then he sunk slowly onto his knees, on the front door step, and wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing his cheek to her belly with a shuddering sigh.

“Okay, baby.” Rey settled one hand onto his head, and, with the other, rubbed the top of her distended abdomen. “You can come now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's happening. And I mean that in more ways than one.


	15. Chapter 15

The baby took Rey’s admonition to _wait_ quite literally. Thirty-nine weeks came and went. The baby didn’t budge. When her due date – and forty full weeks – passed by, Rey became desperate. Every day, it seemed, they were in Maz Kanata’s office. Dr. Kanata would check how dilated Rey was, tut quietly, say, “not yet,” and Rey would despair.

Ben only pretended to be impatient. He wasn’t impatient at all. Every day that Rey’s pregnancy dragged on was another day he got to bask in it. He’d missed five weeks – five weeks of kicks, Braxton Hicks contractions, and odd cravings. There were countless stories he hadn’t had time to whisper against Rey’s belly when she was asleep.

At his office, Ben was, best case, unproductive. Worst case, he was annoyed at having to be there and made everyone else’s lives miserable. Hux tried to talk him down with a sniff of whiskey on the due date – or D-Day, as Hux called it – but it didn’t work. Ben couldn’t find enough to do with his hands when he was at work. He constantly fidgeted.

At Rey’s brownstone, he found he had the opposite problem. Rey couldn’t even put on her own shoes. He fluttered around her nervously, jumping when she snapped at him that she was _perfectly capable_ of walking up and down the front steps and getting up off the couch, _thank you very much_.

She didn’t complain when he put his hands to use rubbing her aching lower back, though. She moaned in what sounded like ecstasy, curled onto her side, the sweater she’d borrowed from him pushed up to expose the small of her back. Ben swallowed hard and kept kneading and prayed she didn’t roll over. She would see the bulge in his trousers, call him a pervert, and he would completely deserve it.

Four days after the due date, Ben gave up on trying to go to work, and gave up on trying to go back to his penthouse to pace and wait, rather than sleep. He told Mitaka that he was taking a long weekend, and added, “Don’t forward me any calls.”

The mousy man had blinked at him, perplexed. It was a completely novel request. “Not even from Mr. Snoke?”

Ben hesitated. He’d gotten a strongly worded email from Snoke in the wee hours of the morning after he’d landed in New York. He’d read it in Rey’s bed, on his cell phone. When he didn’t answer the email within ten minutes, the phone had started buzzing incessantly. He’d silenced it, rolled over to face Rey, and gone back to sleep, the bump bulging comfortingly against his abdomen. The baby had kicked once, sleepily, and then had gone still too, nestled in between her parents.

Communications with the president of the First Order’s parent corporation had since been tense and rare, to say the least.

“Tell him to leave a voicemail if it’s important.” Ben knew nothing Snoke could call about would seem remotely important, in this moment. 

***

All her life, Rey had taken pride in her stoic perseverance. Throughout pregnancy, she’d stubbornly refused help, insisted that she was _fine_ , even when she was vomiting constantly and prone to random sobbing when the wrong commercial came on television.

The last three weeks broke her will. She was ready to meet her daughter, but moreso, she was desperate for her pregnancy to be _over._ She ordered Indian food and ate the whole dish, even though it made her eyes water because it was so spicy. She did squats – very clumsily – and jogged in place every few hours. She climbed up and down the stairs of the brownstone’s stoop. She consumed primrose oil and almost gagged. She took castor oil and threw it up.

At some point, Ben had apparently given up trying to dissuade her. He watched in resigned silence, arms crossed over his chest. When she dissolved into frustrated tears for the second time that day, he wrapped his arms around her, clumsily. They didn’t quite fit together. He had to extend his long arms fully to wrap them around her, considering how far her belly was protruding.

“I am forty and a half _fucking_ weeks pregnant.” She said, tearfully, into his chest. “I just want it to be over.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t want to meet her.” Rey accused. She knew it wasn’t true, but her frustration made her lash out.

“That’s not true.” Ben rubbed his thumbs up and down the sides of her biceps, in a vaguely comforting gesture. “I just… I like you like this.” He said, finally. It was a poor substitute for all the things he wanted to say: _I like the way your belly dwarfs the rest of you. I like the way you curl around it when you sleep. I like looking at you and knowing_ I _did that._

“Huge?” Rey grumbled.

“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

“Never.” Rey resumed pacing around the living room, winding her way between the couch and coffee table. The furniture still didn’t feel like hers – Ben had been shamed by his mother into buying it – and she never really sat on it or used it. In any case, it physically ached to sit still, at this point. “I’m starting to think this baby is a stubborn asshole, just like you. I’ve tried everything.”

“Not _everything_.” Ben watched her from the center of the room. His face was carefully neutral, but she saw his fingers play nervously with the seam of his pants along the outside of his thigh. “Sexual intercourse can induce labor.”

“ _Sexual intercourse_?” Rey stopped short, incredulous.

“Something about semen. And orgasm.” Her face must have been plastered with a look of disbelief, because he added, defensively, “I read it in a book.”

“I’ve been crying all day.” Rey sputtered. “And I feel like a – a baby _elephant_ is sitting on my bladder. Sex is literally the _last_ thing on my mind.”

Ben’s face went beet red, and for a second, she wondered if it was because she’d effectively rejected his awkward advances. Then, she realized, he was turning red because sex, in fact, _wasn’t_ the last thing on _his_ mind. She had been thinking about his suggestion somewhat abstractly, and hadn’t put two and two together. “You want to have sex?”

“Nothing else seems to be working.” He told her, dodging the question. He had a point, and Rey considered it. Desperate times, after all, called for desperate measures. And she _was_ desperate. He saw her hesitate, and added, sarcastically, “Having sex with me can’t possibly be worse than eating _castor oil_.”

Rey narrowed her eyes at him. “Fine. Let’s have sex.”

That surprised him. He did a double-take. “Really?”

“Really. But it had better work.”

***

 “Lights off?” Ben hesitated by the doorway of Rey’s bedroom, reaching for the light switch.  

“Yes, please.” He doused the lights, leaving the room dimly lit by the sun, setting out in the courtyard. Rey sat awkwardly on the edge of her bed and looked at him. “Before we do it. Ground rules.”

“Okay.” _Anything_ , he thought.

“No dirty talk. That’s weird in front of the baby.” Ben snorted, but he didn’t question her logic. “Do you have a condom?”

“No.” Ben almost told her that using a condom was unnecessary and even counter-productive, considering their goal. The look that crossed her face stopped him.

“Are you… clean?”

“Oh. Right.” He yanked his shirt off over his head, balling it up in his hands. “Yes. And I haven’t slept with anybody since I got tested.”

“That’s not like you.” She observed.

“Maybe I’ve changed.” Ben tossed his shirt on the ground. She watched him with curiosity, nibbling her lower lip, as he bent down to take off his shoes and socks. As quickly as he could, before she could change her mind, he hitched his pants and underwear down his thighs.

When he straightened up, Rey had a funny look on her face. Despite how bizarre and even businesslike the situation was, his cock was already jutting towards her, red and heavy with blood, and she was staring at it like she’d never seen one before. “Are you going to take your clothes off, too, or just stare?”

“I’m kind of…” She took a deep breath. “Self-conscious.”

“Don’t be.”

Rey gave him an uncertain look, then stood, with effort, and pulled her over-sized t-shirt off over her head. She held it in front of her breasts, and said, “If you don’t like them, that’s okay.”

“You’re pregnant with my baby. Not liking them would make me the biggest asshole on earth.”

“You can be an asshole.” She told him. “Just be honest.” She hesitated for a second and then lowered the shirt a few inches. Little lines, stretch marks, some of them faded and silvery, and some still red, came into view at the tops and sides of her breasts. She waited, as if she expected him to be repulsed, and when he wasn’t, and she lowered the shirt the rest of the way, revealing darkened, broadened nipples, the veins around them blue and pronounced. She looked down at them, to see what he was staring at, and worked her lip in between her teeth.

“You look amazing. Honestly.” Ben was being sincere, but he could tell Rey didn’t believe him. He crossed the room, and took the shirt out of her hands so she couldn’t cover herself up again. With his other hand, he reached tenatively for her breast. Her nipple pebbled up against the pad of his thumb as he touched it ever-so-lightly.

Rey drew a deep, shuddering breath, and reached down. He looked, turning his head to see past her belly as she hooked her thumbs in the waistband of the leggings she was wearing. She wiggled them past her hips, letting them fall to the floor and pool around her ankles. When she tried to kick them off, she lost her balance. Ben lurched forward, forgetting that he was totally naked, and steadied her. Still gripping his forearm, she sat, gingerly, on the mattress.

Ben knelt at her feet, and gently eased the leggings off. When he looked back up at her, she surprised him with a kiss. It was a tentative, feather-light kiss. As she pulled away, he reared up off his haunches and chased her onto the bed, cadging her in with his arms, craving more. Rey sighed into his mouth and slowly sank back onto the mattress. He eased on top of her, stopping short when belly bumped against his ribcage and stomach. Hovering over it, he craned his neck down to kiss her. He couldn’t quite reach. Making a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, Ben rolled off and lay on his back.

“Sorry.” Rey sounded breathless. “I’m not really sure how this is supposed to work.”

Ben knew how it could work. He’d thought about it. He’d wrapped himself around her in bed before, and wondered, with a twinge of exciting guilt, how it would feel to ease into her from behind, curling his much larger body around hers, hands cradling her midsection. Alternately, he’d fantasized about her straddling him, her belly resting on his lower abdomen as she rocked.

But none of that was what he wanted right now. He wanted to see her face, and he wanted to keep kissing her. He arranged her on her back, bending her knees so that the tops of her thighs were flush with the bottom of her belly. He laid next to her on his side, draped her legs over his, set her feet flat on the mattress, and worked his pelvis under her, until it was wedged against the backs of her thighs and bottom. His erection poked up between her legs. Her hand reached down, curious, and touched the weeping, purpling tip of it.  

“Can I come inside you?” Ben asked, throatily, his face pressed against her shoulder. He rested his hand on her belly and watched her index finger trace the ridge on the underside of his member.

“Yes.” Rey whispered the word.  He slid his hand down between their tangled legs, found his shaft, and pulled his cock out of her reach, gliding the head of it down between her folds.

“I wish you’d asked me that question nine months ago.” Her voice hitched when he nudged gently at her entrance.

“I don’t.” He told her, bluntly. Her eyes widened in surprise, and her mouth rounded. He liked that expression, and he liked it even more when her eyes fluttered closed and she inhaled sharply as he pushed halfway into her, somewhat impeded by their position.

His hand settled on her far hip, and Rey did the rest of the work of joining them. She tilted her hips further up, obligingly, letting him sink deeper. He hissed, every muscle in his abdomen clenching with the effort of staying still when she felt _so_ wet and _so_ warm. She quivered around him, her fingers clenching at the bedsheets.

A soft, high-pitched whimper escaped her when he thrust shallowly, experimentally against her. “I don’t, really, either.”

A warm rush sped up his spine. Her admission, along with the unimaginable intimacy of being inside her at the same time as the baby, was almost enough to move him to tears. He leaned down on his elbow, hid his face in the pillow, and rocked slowly against her.

Rey lay still at first, breathing heavily, but soon, she undulated and twisted her hips. She couldn’t thrust against him in her position, but she seemed desperate for something. Ben hooked his hand under her thigh and groped for her clitoris. When he found it, her face scrunched up, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. “ _Oh_.”

“Good girl.” His voice was strained, and his lips brushed her shoulder as he urged her on. “Come on.”

“Harder.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Ben grunted out the words rhythmically. He wasn’t working very hard, physically, but the effort it took to keep his thrusts shallow and slow was herculean.

“You’re trying to put me in labor, aren’t you?” Rey huffed. “ _Harder_.”

Holding back when something primal in him needed to _pound_ had been torture. He thrust harder, groaning in relief. Her breasts and belly bounced around with the force of it, up and down and side to side. It was mesmerizing. He sped up, unconsciously, as he watched them, his mouth hanging open. When he did, Rey put her hands over her breasts, holding them in place. That, in and of itself, was erotic, but he panted, “Does this hurt?”

“No.” Her voice came out high-pitched.

“Move your hands.” He ground his hips against hers in a figure-eight pattern. She did, and then he had to close his eyes so he wouldn’t come early. He found her hard, quivering little nub again and rubbed it more forcefully, his fingers splayed out over her sex. He could feel the base of his cock hitting his wrist with every thrust. “Come on.”

“Oh, _fuck_.”

“Not in front of the baby.” He gasped, leaning over and kissing her sloppily. She laughed, desperately, into his mouth. Her eyes were screwed closed.

“Oh.” She didn’t swear this time. Her voice turned into a wail, and her nails dug into his shoulder. “I’m going to –”

“Come on. Come on.” He babbled, pumping into her. She _needed_ to, because he was going to.

Her back arched just barely, under the weight of her heavy belly, and she keened, bucking up against his hand. Unable to stop himself, Ben growled in half-pain, half-pleasure as the pressure at the base of his belly released. He came inside her, moaning and jerking as his thrusts slowed and the last spurts left him. Outside of his own whited-out bliss, he was aware that she was just a beat behind him. 

Ben half-expected Rey to swear again when she came, but she didn’t. She cried out his name.

***

“Do you think it worked?”

“If you screaming my name is any indication –” Ben sounded sleepy but utterly self-satisfied.

“Shut up.” Rey slapped at the back of his head, half-heartedly. He was laying with his head on the breasts she’d been so self-conscious about, occasionally kissing them while she played with his sweaty, tangled hair. “You know what I mean.”

“I hope it didn’t work.” He exhaled, breath hot across her skin. “I want to do that again.”

***

They slept like that, Ben’s breath tickling the top of her bump, his arm cradling it protectively. Rey dreamed of an ocean, and when she woke up, there was water all around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *lights cigarette* oh no, that's bad for the baby! 
> 
> P.S. This chapter is so long. I thought about cutting it in half, but nobody likes blue balls. You're welcome. Also, thanks for sticking with me during this insanely long slow burn. 
> 
> P.P.S. A few of you guessed that this was where we were headed - so I hope I lived up to your preggo sexpectations!


	16. Chapter 16

Rey stood under the showerhead, looking at the tile wall blankly. She could hear her breath, ragged and harsh in her ears.

 _One. Two. Three._ She counted to one hundred and eighty-three seconds before the next contraction hit her, doubling her over.

“Rey?” She looked through the steamed-up shower door. Ben was naked, groggy, and grumpy. He rubbed his eyes, wearily. “Why is the bed wet?”

“My water broke.”

He blinked at her, still half asleep. “What?”

“I think I’m in labor.”

He went pale. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I wanted to take a shower first.” Rey told him, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Ben looked at her like she’d lost her mind. He wrenched open the glass door, grabbed her arm, and yanked her out of the shower. She stood, shivering, as he wrapped a towel around her.

“We need to go.” His voice was uncharacteristically high-pitched. “We need to go _now_.”

“My contractions are still – still one hundred and eighty-three seconds apart.” Rey shivered, stumbling over her words. She couldn’t stop shaking, whether from the chill or the shock of adrenaline and panic to her system. His arms folded around her, quickly, and she could feel that he was shaking, too.

***

In the back of the taxi, Rey counted to one-hundred and sixty seconds between each contraction, under her breath. When a fresh one hit, she squeezed Ben’s hand with force sufficient to make him wince as he made the brief, essential phone calls – Dr. Kanata, his mother, Hux (Phasma screeched in the background), and, begrudgingly, Finn.

Rey made a low, pained and _furious_ noise through her teeth when they stopped at a stop-light. It was five in the morning, early rush hour, and the taxi driver looked back at her, nervously. “You’re not going to pop that baby out in my taxi, are you?”

“Shut the fuck up.” Ben snapped. “No, not you, Mom. We’re ten blocks away. No, she hasn’t threatened to castrate me yet.” His eyes flickered to Rey’s, almost hopefully. Rey was too far gone for humor. She all but bared her teeth at him.

***

By the time they got to labor and delivery room, the contractions were only one-hundred and twenty-two seconds apart, and exponentially more powerful. Rey sobbed when the attending told her that it was too late to give her the epidural. She was dilated nine centimeters, he explained, apologetically, and by the time the anesthesiologist finished with the two patients who’d come in before her, reviewed her chart, set up the cocktail, given her an intravenous bolus, and placed the epidural, she’d likely have delivered the baby. Best case scenario, all of that could be done, but she would give birth before she even felt the effects of the epidural.

“I shouldn’t have taken the fucking shower.” Rey wailed, hysterically, as the nurse tried to soothe her. “Why was I in a hurry to make this happen? Why did we have _sex_?” Ben started laughing, despite himself, half out of horror, earning a dirty look from the nurse. Rey didn’t even hear his short-lived, panicked laughter. Tears streamed down her face. “I changed my mind. This can wait. I want to go home.”

“Rey, we can’t go home.” It was like reasoning with a child, or talking someone off a cliff. Ben wasn’t the right person for either of those situations, and he didn’t feel like the right person for _this_ situation. She needed someone with nerves of steel. Someone who didn’t feel lightheaded every time she had a contraction.

“ _Please_ take me home.” She groped at his sleeve, her eyes huge and imploring. This was the bargaining phase, apparently. “I’m scared.”

“It’s going to be over fast. He said there isn’t even time to get the anesthesiologist up here.” Her panic was starting to infect him. He tried to think of something to say, and blurted out, terrified, “Remember the breathing? Let’s practice the breathing.”

“I don’t want to practice breathing!” Rey gulped in between sobs. Her breath was coming fast and shallow, as if she was having a panic attack. “I’m scared to have a baby. I don’t _want_ a baby. I can’t be responsible for a _person_.”

“I’ll go get ice chips.” The nurse murmured, diplomatically.

“Where is this coming from?” Ben faltered, once they were alone. “You never said anything –”

“Because it didn’t feel _real_.” Rey’s breath hitched loudly. She looked utterly miserable, and it was almost enough to make him believe it wasn’t just the hormones and the pain talking. “Now it’s really happening and I don’t _want_ it to.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t _tell_ me what I mean!” Now, his joke about her castrating him didn’t seem so funny. She looked like she might actually do it. She wasn’t bargaining any longer. She was angry. “I _don’t want to do this_.”

For his part, Ben felt like he was going to vomit. Rey was supposed to be the stoic one, the _strong_ one. She wasn’t supposed to hyperventilate and panic and cry and make him feel totally helpless. For nine months, he’d vacillated between terror that something would go wrong with the pregnancy and terror that he would be a piss-poor father. He’d never stopped to consider that something might go terribly wrong with _Rey_. “You – I can’t deal with this right now.”

“You can’t deal with this?” Rey choked. “You can’t deal with this _right now_? I’m having a baby, _right now_.”

“No, I can’t deal with this!” He stalked in circles around the room, yanking at his hair and looking wildly around for way out. “I’m freaking the fuck out. _You_ can’t freak out. You were the one that wanted this baby.”

Rey opened her mouth to yell, and then clamped it shut and reared up in the hospital bed, going pale as another contraction hit her.

 _Door._ The door. Ben lurched towards it, desperate to get away, even if just into the relative safety of the hallway. Dr. Kanata marched into the room, her aura of authority belying her small statute, cutting off his route of escape. She snapped the cuffs of her latex gloves.

“You.” She pointed to Ben threateningly. “Outside. You.” She pointed to Rey. “Breathe.”

In the hallway, the diminutive doctor poked Ben in the chest, saying, fiercely, “Listen up. Someone has to be the adult in that room, and since you’re not the one pushing a baby out from between your legs, you’re it. Pull yourself together and be a father.”

Ben threw up his hands in frustration, wondering whether it was par for the course for ob-gyns to scold their patients, or give unsolicited relationship advice.  “I don’t know how to.”

Maz Kanata made an exasperated noise. “Get in there and hold her hand and let her scream at you. And _don't_ scream back.”

***

Ben went back into the delivery room with no small amount of shame and trepidation. Rey had stopped yelling and was crying in earnest now, slumped over her belly. He went over to the hospital bed, and sat on the edge of it, next to her shoulder. She tried to move away, but there wasn’t room, so when he shifted his weight and wrapped his arm around her, she lashed out at him with her fists with surprising ferocity but little force. Her elbow just barely missed his groin, and he had a suspicion she’d intended to land the blow there.

“Stop.” Ben held her tightly against his side, crushing her arms and rendering them immobile, in self-preservation, as he kissed the crown of her head. She closed her eyes, going limp. Tears leaked out from her eyelids and down her cheeks, and she stopped fighting him. He spoke quietly, against her scalp. “All of this is going to seem silly once she’s here. We’re going to laugh about it later. Okay?”

Rey made a shuddering, wet noise in response.

“In the meantime, you can scream and yell and hit me. It’s not going to hurt my feelings.” He hesitated for a second, and then added, joking nervously, “Just don’t go for my penis, okay?”

“I should.” Rey hiccupped. “This is its fault.”

“I know.” He stopped himself from reminding her that it was _just_ as much her fault as his. If she needed a punching bag, fine. He’d be a punching bag. “You can be as mad as you like. I’ll be right here.”

***

“Ben.”

“Yeah.” He croaked. Rey’s grip was slowly crushing every bone in his hand. He sat by the head of the bed, taking deep, exaggerated, steadying breaths, more for his own sake than for hers. He’d been by the foot of the bed, by Dr. Kanata and the attending, the first time the top of a bloody, bald head had protruded from inside the birth canal during a contraction. It had disappeared again, but not before he’d gone woozy and green. He’d gone to the head of the bed, then, deciding losing a hand to her machinations was better than fainting on the floor of the delivery room.

 “I’m glad you’re here.” Rey told him, panting. She looked almost transcendent with pain. Ben almost let out a little whine as she tightened her fingers around his.

“Of course I’m here.” His words came out choppily

“I mean I’m glad it was you who got me pregnant.” She huffed out the words, and then screwed up her face, shaking her head, her mouth open in a silent wail.

“Crowning.” Dr. Kanata sounded miraculously calm from the bottom of the hospital bed. Rey’s silent wail wasn’t silent anymore. It wasn’t a noise Ben could label. He’d never heard a human make a noise like that.

“Don’t say nice things like that.” He said, desperately. “Be mad at me. It’ll distract you.”

Rey’s scream broke into hysterical, choked laughter, and he wondered if she’d finally just snapped.

“Hard part’s over, Mom.” Dr. Kanata sounded pleased. “Her head’s out. One more little push.”

It took Ben a moment to realize that he still heard screaming, and it wasn’t Rey’s.

***

The motley group in the waiting room of the labor and delivery wing – Leia Organa, full dressed and coifed and practically vibrating with excitement, Hux, nursing coffees and fielding calls from the office, and Finn, stand-offish and alone – didn’t speak to each other at first.

Then, Phasma arrived with a cardboard holder full of coffees and distributed them, and as the waiting friends and family consumed caffeine, they all huddled together in the uncomfortable chairs and talked in low voices.

Ben emerged from the swinging doors at thirty-two minutes past seven in the morning. Everyone looked expectantly at him. His mother rose off her chair, hands clasped in front of her mouth. They all wanted to ask questions, he knew – _is Rey all right? Is the baby here? Is everything okay?_ They waited for him to speak, though.

He tried to find words to describe his daughter.

***

_She was a tiny, sticky thing that had emerged into the world, screeching. She was perfunctorily wiped down, weighed, snipped free of her umbilical cord, and put in his arms. He didn’t know how to hold her. She seemed impossibly small and delicate. Six pounds, ten ounces. Eighteen inches long. Smaller than any child of his ought to be. She fit in his hand._

_Blood and fluids from her hair smeared all over the surgical gown he’d put over his shirt when he drew her closer to his chest, and but he barely noticed. He just blinked down at her, a fuzzy sound in his ears._

_Cupping her against his body with one arm, he moved the tip of his finger down the side of her face. Her blueish eyelids twitched, but she didn’t open her eyes. When the pad of his finger crossed her pursed little lips, she stopped crying, latched onto it toothlessly, and snuffled wetly._

_He marveled at her._

_“Ben.” Rey had sounded like she’d run a marathon, although, really, labor and delivery had been more of a sprint._

_“She’s so perfect.” He wasn’t sure where the sentiment came from. She was unbathed, wrinkled, and bruised from birth. Her head was a funny shape, and she was almost entirely bald. But she was perfect. He couldn’t look away from her._

_“Ben.” Rey tried to sit up, and failed. “Please.”_

_He looked at her – sweaty, red-faced, and tear-stained – and hesitated. The baby sucked impotently on his finger, screwing her face up for a wail when no milk came out. Hungry. She was hungry. He instinctually wanted to feed her, to make sure she was happy and full and didn’t cry. Already there was an intense need to care for this little creature._

_Equally intense was his desire to hold onto her and keep her for himself. He’d waited so long to hold his daughter. Rey had held her for nine whole months, and now she was holding out her arms._

_Rey fumbled at her hospital gown, pushing it down. When Ben set the baby very gently against her bare skin, the infant squirmed in his hands for a second, tiny hands clenching and unclenching against her mother’s breasts, still crying._

_He pressed his palm against the baby’s back and head, moving her gently into place. Rey’s smaller hand fluttered across his, and they both watched with baited breath. The newborn stopped crying, abruptly, and started to nurse; not well, but not for lack of trying._

_Rey exhaled shakily in relief._

_“Look at you.” Ben whispered, watching his daughter nurse. He looked up at Rey, and repeated, with just as much awe, awe that she’d carried and birthed and was feeding a baby. “Look at you.”_

***

Everyone in the waiting room was still staring at him. Worry started to crease their features when he didn’t say anything, but for some reason, he still couldn’t. Finally, he nodded, over and over, covering his mouth with his hand, and relief broke over their faces.

Wordlessly, his mother strode over to him, stood on her tiptoes, and drew him into her arms. He rested his head on her shoulder for a second, blinking back tears. When his mother pulled away, she _was_ crying.

“Can I meet her?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *throws pink confetti, buys all of you cigars, sends out birth announcements*
> 
> P.S. A few of you have asked how long this story will be. I anticipate around 25-30 chapters. While this might seem like a natural place to end this story, it is, after all, a birth, so in some ways, it's a beginning.


	17. Chapter 17

One by one, they were admitted into the labor and delivery room to meet the baby, as if they were granted audiences with a newborn princess.

***

Leia got to meet her first. She covered her mouth with her hands and stood in the doorframe. Rey looked at Ben, perplexed and a little terrified, and he mouthed silently to her, “She’s fine.”

 When Leia recovered herself a little, he clapped his mother on the shoulder, gently. “Would you like to hold her?”

She very much did. She took the infant and walked around the room making soft cooing sounds and kissing her downy, barely-feathered head. Her eyes were very bright. “You two made a _beautiful_ baby.”

“We did.” Ben looked at Rey, his eyes soft. It was the look she’d seen on his face when he’d held their daughter for the first time – an adoring, utterly content look. She blinked, arrested by that look being directed at _her_.

“Thank you.” Leia handed the baby back to her son with no reluctance, and then leaned over Rey’s bed and placed her hand on her cheek. She looked at her the same way she’d looked at the baby – as if she was brand new and long-anticipated. “And thank you. I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

“Mom, I’m only thirty-two.” Ben made a soft, amused noise, tucking the baby under his chin and inhaling her scent deeply.

“Right.” Leia squeezed Rey’s hand. “Plenty of time to give me a few more grandchildren.” She seemed to remembered something, suddenly. “Oh! I brought you underwear. I can’t imagine Ben remembered that.”

Rey laughed, awkwardly, remembering what a mad rush he’d been in, throwing clothes into a bag while she sat on the bed, panting and holding her stomach, still wet from her impromptu shower. “Oh. Thank you.”

“I did remember, actually.” Ben sounded slightly offended. “I put it in the bag.”

“You know where my underwear drawer is?” Rey asked, archly.

Leia just looked smug.

****

“She’s gorgeous.” Finn leaned over and kissed Rey’s forehead. “Like her mom.”

Ben was ostensibly sitting across the room, giving them privacy, but Rey could feel the sear of his gaze. She glanced over, and saw him watching the three of them together. His eyes were flinty and narrowed. She wasn’t sure if his ire was roused by Finn holding the baby, kissing her forehead, or by both, but it was considerable. His mouth was creased into an angry line, he kept shifting in his chair, and his arms were crossed over his chest.

After a few minutes, he snapped. He sprang out of the chair and approached Finn, holding his hands out. “Let me have her.”

“Ben.” Rey was too exhausted to pick a fight. “He can hold her.”

“He’s held her long enough.” Ben’s voice dropped an octave.

The baby started to cry, as if on cue, and suddenly, Finn was all-too-eager to hand her back to Ben. He took her, retreating to the corner of the room and cradling against his chest. He threw Rey a baleful glare, as if she ought to have been on his side during this power-struggle.

Rey gave Finn an apologetic look. “I think I need to rest.”

“No, I get it.” Her sweet, sweet friend smoothed the hair off her face. “I’ll go.”

***

“You have to take her away from me.” Phasma told Hux, handing him the swaddled infant. “Or I’m going to want one of my own.”

Hux took the baby, grinning cheekily. Somehow, he held the baby like an expert, and Ben remembered that he had countless cousins in Queens. “Would that be such a bad thing?”

“Oh, that doesn’t _help_.” Phasma buried her face in her hands. She turned to Rey. “You’re a badass, by the way. Just thinking about giving birth makes me want to cry and curl into a fetal position.”

Rey smiled, weakly, and Ben caught her eye. He grinned a little, as if to say, _your secret’s safe with me._

***

When their baby was taken away for her hearing screenings, and heel prick, Ben looked like he’d been punched in the gut.

To her surprise, Rey breathed a sigh of relief. For some reason, a weight lifted off her shoulders. “Can I take a shower?”

“With supervision.” Dr. Kanata nodded. “You lost a lot of blood. You might slip and fall.”

“I can take a shower by myself.” Rey murmured.

“Sorry, hospital policy.” Dr. Kanata looked at Ben. “Dad, or nurse?”

***

Ben pulled a chair into the attached bathroom and sat just outside the semi-opaque curtain while she showered. They didn’t say anything, at first. Rey looked at her feet, past her still swollen but oddly empty stomach, and watched the blood from between her legs drain away.

“What do you want to name her?”

“I don’t know.”

“We have to fill out the birth certificate before we leave.”

“We don’t have to put a first name on it.” Rey rinsed out her hair, feeling a little light-headed. She eased down the wall of the shower and sat on the floor.

“Rey?” Ben pushed aside the shower curtain, a note of alarm in his voice.

“I just need to sit down.”

His eyes took in the blood on the shower floor and her pale face. They probably also took in her post-partum body, which, for some reason, felt even _less_ like her body than her heavily pregnant body had. Rey wrapped her arms around her knees, hiding the soft, unstretched skin of her stomach. “Do you need me to call the nurse?”

“Put the curtain back.” She sounded uncharacteristically shy. “Can you just hand me my clothes?”

He helped her stand up, averting his eyes, this time, and then passed her clothes, piece by piece, past the shower curtain, while she braced herself on the safety bar. The clothes he’d brought were practical – sweatpants, and a big sweater. The underwear was not.

It was a pretty, lacy thing, barely a scrap of fabric. Rey started laughing and then grunted, realizing that that hurt. “Ben, I can’t wear a thong.”

“Why not?”

“Because I – God, never mind.” She could feel herself go inexplicably red, even though he couldn’t see her. Maybe she’d never wear underwear like that again. “Go get me the underwear your mom brought. And one of those…” She cleared her throat. “Bandages.”

He obeyed, and when he came back, he seemed to understand. He handed her the medicated pad and the sensible underwear, without looking. “You don’t have to be embarrassed by any of this.”

“I’m not embarrassed.” Rey yanked the shower curtain closed. She put on the underwear Leia had brought her – sensible, comfortable, and accommodating of the awful, surf-board sized pad she had to wear to catch the bleeding. She played with the slack skin that fell over the top of her underwear. Her breasts hurt, she noted, dully, as she put on the sweater he’d brought her. They were uncomfortably tight with milk, and already, her nipples were chaffed.

Ben had, somehow, managed to make her feel attractive when she was pregnant. Beautiful, even. He’d said as much, and even if he hadn’t, the way he’d made love to her would have convinced her that he liked her pregnant body.

Inexplicably, now that the baby was out of her belly, she felt even more deeply self-conscious. She suspected that the thing that had drawn him to her bump and swollen breasts was the knowledge that his baby was tucked away inside her. She felt different now, more fundamentally different then she had when she'd been pregnant. She wasn’t young and thin anymore, like she’d been when they conceived their daughter, and she wasn't carrying his child. She was just stretched out and ripped and puffy. She felt used up, and so _tired_.

 “You just had my baby.” He sounded confused. “I can help you with – ”

“ _Our_ baby.” Rey moved carefully out of the shower, fully dressed, wincing at the pain between her legs. “And I don’t need your help.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat, suddenly guarded. “Our baby.”

***

The birth certificate just said _Baby Girl Solo_ , but once it was signed, they could leave. Ben wheeled her out in chair, despite her protestations. The baby slept against her breasts, milk-drunk. Her little mouth opened and closed with each tiny breath. Rey watched her breathe as the Mercedes pulled up to the discharge exit.

Ben’s driver beamed and congratulated them. Rey tried to muster a smile and failed. It took too much effort to smile.

Ben fumbled and cursed for about ten minutes trying to install the baby’s car seat in the back of the Mercedes. The lack of sleep, and perhaps his frustration with her, got to him after a while. “Fuck!” He ground out. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Do you need me to try?” Rey asked, quietly.

“No.” He snapped. “I need to learn how to do this.”

“Mr. Solo…” The driver leaned over, and, with remarkable efficiency, snapped the seat into place. “I have four kids.”

The look that crossed Ben’s face told her he felt painfully aware of his total inadequacy.  

***

When they pulled up in front of the brownstone, it was almost nine in the evening. Rey let Ben carry the car seat up to the front door, as she slowly, painfully climbed the stoop.

Movement caught her eye. She half-turned, bracing herself on the railing. There was a man standing half-behind the stoop of the brownstone three houses down. He was staring at her, his face half in shadow. She didn’t recognize him, and he didn’t say anything.

“Rey?”

She glanced over her shoulder. Ben had the door open. He looked wary of offering to help her, but he did it anyways. “Do you need help?”

Rey looked back down the street. The man was gone. “No, I’m coming.”

***

“Rey.” Ben’s voice came to her like a phantom in her dreamless sleep. She moaned, something about not wanting to wake up yet, and she heard it again. “Rey.”

The alarm clock said it was four in the morning. She’d been asleep for two hours, since the last time the baby had nursed. She rolled over, feeling like she was underwater, her limbs weighed down by water.

Ben didn’t look as if he’d slept.

“She’s starting to wake up.” He was standing at the foot of the bed, rocking gently back and forth on his heels. She wondered if he’d been rocking and pacing for two hours, while she’d slept. “She’s hungry.”

“She’s always hungry.” Rey reached for the hem of her shirt, and then stopped.

“I’ve seen them before.” He sounded exasperated. He was right, of course; he’d seen her nurse before, too, when he’d first put the baby in her arms.  When she didn’t answer, he exhaled heavily. “Do you want to borrow my shirt? It buttons up. You can just push it to the side and I won’t see anything. “

The button-up dress shirt fit Rey like a dress, or a shroud. To her relief, it obscured her shape completely, even when she unbuttoned the top two buttons and pushed fabric aside enough for the baby to find her nipple. Nursing her was still an alien and somewhat unpleasant sensation. It was intimate, but surreal. She almost felt detached from her own body as she watched her daughter latch onto it.

Ben stayed at the foot of the bed, watching her, bare-chested. The exasperation had left his face, replaced by curious awe.

“What?” Rey gave him an uncertain look. He jumped, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“Nothing.” Ben’s mouth twitched. They were silent. The faint, suckling sounds of nursing were the only noises in the room.

“You look great in my shirt.” He said, finally.

***

“You can put her down, you know. Don’t you need to sleep?” Rey asked, incredulously, when the baby was done nursing, and he took her back. She sunk back into the mattress, bone-tired.

Ben looked at the bassinet, next to the side of the bed, and then hesitated. His eyes were dark-circled, and his pacing was becoming slower and slower. He hadn’t put the baby down, except to let Rey nurse, since they’d gotten to the apartment. He’d been in constant motion. Looking at the clock, Rey realized it was exactly twenty-four hours since her water had broken. “Ben. Sleep.”

He relented, laying the baby in the bassinet and hunching over her like a gentle monster. He watched her, for a second, and then straightened up, unbuckling his belt. As he stripped down to his underwear, he asked, softly, so as not to wake the baby. “Can I have that side of the bed?”

“That’s my side of the bed.” Rey told him, equally as softly. He frowned, but moved around the mattress and lay down on the far side of it.

The baby made a soft, snuffling noise in her sleep, and that seemed to break his will. He rolled over and scooted closer to her. Rey would have moved out of his reach, but she was crowded at the edge of the mattress by his chest and arms.

When he rested his hand on her hip, tentatively, she flinched, but didn’t saying anything. With a tired but happy sigh, he wrapped his arm around her, pressed his open mouth to her shoulder blade, and then rested his chin on the crook of her neck so he could look at the bassinet in the dim light of the nightlight. He’d installed it so they wouldn’t trip getting up to feed the baby.

Rey contemplated telling him he could just have the side of the bed that was closest to the crib, but the heat and weight of his body was strangely comforting. His heart thudded against her back, slowly, and she focused on its rhythm. His breath didn’t slow down and even out, but hers did.

Sleep came easier for her than it did for him. He fought it, looking at their daughter. It swallowed her like an old friend.

***

The next morning, Ben went to his penthouse to shower and change. He asked her, with a guilty expression, if she could manage by herself for an hour. Her face must have been fierce, because rather than wait for an answer, he mumbled an apology. His nose brushed her chest as he bent to kiss his daughter’s scalp, and when he straightened, he was standing very close.

“I’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll be fine.” Rey looked down at the baby, and took a step back. “We’ll be fine.”

She’d said that to convince herself, partly. When she was alone, Rey exhaled, heavily. It was not a sigh of relief. Something nervous twisted in her gut as she looked down at the six-pound human laying against her chest. She was sleeping, perfectly still. They were alone, together, and she didn’t know what to do. She wanted to sleep. She needed to change her pad and underwear. She wanted to eat. She felt like she couldn’t set this little person down, though.

Tears pricked at her eyes, but before Rey could cry in earnest, someone knocked on the door.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being a new mother is very messy - emotionally and physically. I hope you aren't squicked out, or that you don't think Rey is a bad mother, or doesn't love her child. I just think my story would be dishonest if it didn't deal with the complicated feelings that accompany childbirth. 
> 
> P.S. I am now opening the betting pool on Baby Girl Solo's name.


	18. Chapter 18

When Ben went back to the office – a week after the baby’s birth – he was pleasantly surprised by all the congratulations he got. People whose names he didn’t even know smiled at him and shook his hand. Mitaka hugged him, which was bizarre and somewhat uncomfortable. Phasma came to his office to perch on his desk and flick through the hundreds of photos he’d taken on his phone since the birth. Hux brought champagne and cigars for the whole floor.

Less surprising, and much less pleasant, were all the messages Mr. Snoke had left. They ranged in timbre from furious to businesslike to mind-numbingly boring. He rested his head in his hands as he listened to them, too exhausted to get riled up. He’d slept no more than three hours at a time since his daughter’s birth.

In some ways, it was a relief to be back at the office. Rey had cried every day since the baby had been born. Most of the time, she cried in the shower, or when he went to his penthouse to get more clothes and freshen up. Her eyes were tell-tale, though. They were red-rimmed and swollen. He didn’t ask why she cried. He assumed it was hormones run amuck, and he knew that when it came to Rey, hormonal sobbing was only one mis-step away from hormonal rage.  

For her part, the baby didn’t bother hiding her tears or her indignation. She seemed to cry whenever she was awake. She was _particularly_ apt to wail until she was red in the face if it was in the middle of the night.

Ben was hopeless in the face of all this. Feeding the baby worked, so he tried feeding Rey. That didn’t work. No matter what he brought her or made her, she picked at it listlessly. Letting Rey curl up in bed and sleep, undisturbed, worked.  The baby seemed determined _never_ to sleep, no matter how much he begged and rocked and paced. He would bottle-feed her pumped breastmilk so Rey could sleep, and still she’d cry and cry.

Her crying would keep Rey awake, and she’d say, wan-faced, “Please make her stop.”

“I’m trying.”

“Please.”

“I’m trying!” His temper would flare up, stoked by his frustration and exhaustion, and then he’d tamp it down. “Go back to bed.”

When she did, Ben would speak to the baby, in a hushed, urgent voice. “Okay, sweetheart. Mommy needs sleep. You have to stop crying.” The baby would only cry harder, as if she could sense his distress.

Bargaining worked with _neither_ Rey or the baby. Neither of them would listen to reason.

It was slowly driving him insane. He was a man of reason. He was ready to be back at work. Guilt plagued him, but in his office, he was in control. He kept his own schedule, not the schedule of a six-pound dictator. It was blessedly quiet.

***

“Ben.”

He jerked awake. Hux was in the doorway of his office.  

“Sorry, I… “ He glanced at the clock. “Fuck, it’s three o’clock already?”

“You were out cold. Mitaka didn’t have the heart to wake you up.” He grinned. “Or the balls.”

“I’m too tired to kill anyone right now.” Ben rubbed his eyes. It was Friday, and he’d stayed up half the night with the baby. The other half of the night, he’d worried about the end of the quarter and the subsequent board of directors meetings. “The baby is on a sleep strike.”

“Have you been staying over at Rey’s place?” Hux’s voice was carefully casual. He picked up the framed picture of the baby on Ben’s desk and examined it, avoiding eye contact.

“We split the late-night feedings. She takes midnight, I take three-thirty.” He grumbled.

“Right.” Hux nodded, seriously. Too seriously. He was making a point; one Ben chose to ignore. “Of course.”

Ben frowned at him. “I’m…” His words broke into a yawn, and by the time his jaw cracked mightily, he’d forgotten what he was going to say in his own defense.

“You should go home.” Hux grinned. He set the picture back on Ben’s desk. “Oh, sorry. I mean you should go to your baby mama’s apartment. Where you’ve been sleeping. Which is definitely not your home.”

Ben grunted, grumpily. His brain was working too slowly to formulate a biting response, and Hux looked entirely too self-satisfied for his taste.

 _Home._ Home was a snuffling, sleepy baby on his chest while he watched television and Rey curled into a ball on the other end of the couch, fast asleep. He’d been away long enough to regain his sanity and begin to miss them again. Home sounded good.

***

The Mercedes idled in traffic. Ben looked out the window, contemplating a nap against the tinted window, when he saw a flower stand.

Women liked flowers. Flowers were a _gesture_. On a whim, he told his driver he’d walk the rest of the way to the brownstone. At the flower stand, he nibbled his lip nervously, and examined the flowers.

Roses? Probably, he thought, wryly, that was too romantic. Or, at least, Rey would see it as too romantic. He settled for peonies. Peonies said _thank you for giving birth to our child._ That, and _thank you for taking care of her all by yourself while I’m at work._ Maybe peonies even said _, please don’t cry._

***

“Rey?” In his excitement to give her the flowers, he’d forgotten that the baby was probably sleeping. Under his breath, he muttered, “Fuck.”

He didn’t hear any ear-splitting screams, though, so he breathed a sigh of relief and crept into the living room. The room was scattered with baby’s things – swing, blankets, monitor, stuffed animals the baby was too young to appreciate. That sweet newborn smell was in the air. He inhaled a lungful, suddenly aware of how different the brownstone smelled than his office. The living room smelled like baby shampoo and fresh diapers. His office smelled like cleaning products and copy paper.

He’d missed this smell, during the day. Intent on pressing his nose into his daughter’s scalp and getting more of it, Ben walked quietly towards the bedroom. Maybe the baby was asleep. Maybe Rey was asleep. He could slip off his shoes and slip into bed with her. He’d put the peonies on the bedside table so she’d see them first thing when she woke up. Maybe she would smile and roll over into him. If the baby wasn’t awake and screaming from her crib, maybe she’d even kiss him.

“Ben.”

He half-turned, wondering if he was hallucinating from lack of sleep. He knew that voice. It was gravelly and deep, and familiar in a way that made his stomach clench up.

His father was sitting in the corner chair, the one he rocked the baby in during the wee hours of the morning. He was wearing ill-fitting clothes, civilian clothes, rather than a bright jumpsuit, and his facial hair was starting to grow out. The baby was asleep on his lap, her tiny limbs sprawled out in utter contentedness.

Han held up a finger to his lips, when Ben’s mouth fell open. “Shh.”

***

Rey wandered the streets of Harlem until four-fifteen. She went to the bodega where she used to buy milk and wandered the aisles. She studied the windows of her old apartment, and waved to the street performer she used to buy coffee for, sometimes.

At four-fifteen, she hailed a cab. Ben would be leaving the office soon. He’d stop and get dinner, and then he’d let himself into her brownstone, like he had every day that week. He’d take the baby in his arms and whisper to her as he walked in slow circles around the living room. The baby would smile and stop crying for _him_. Not for her.

The two of them would be in their own little world, and Rey would be alone in hers.

***

Ben was standing in the living room, holding the baby, when she got to the brownstone. He was waiting for her, his face stony. The baby was crying, great, hiccupping sobs, into his chest.

“You’re early.” She stammered. She tried to take the baby from him, and he took a step back. His nostrils flared. If he hadn’t been holding their daughter, Rey was sure he would have yelled at her. Instead, his voice was low and dangerously soft.

“Where have you been?”

“I…” She lost her voice for a second. Looking around the room, she realized that Han was gone. She wondered if the baby was screaming because Ben had fought with him. “I had to go out. Give me the baby. She’s hungry.”

“You left my daughter with a convicted felon.” She recognized the look on his face now – he wasn’t angry. He felt betrayed.

“I left _our_ daughter with her _grandfather_.” She reached for the baby again, and he took another step away, tightening his hold. The infant began to wail in earnest. “Give her to me.”

He ignored her, holding the baby out of her reach. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

“I needed to get out of the house, okay?” Rey snapped.

“What is wrong with you?” He was yelling in earnest now, the volume of his voice eclipsing the baby. “She’s a baby. You can’t just leave her.”

“I didn’t leave her.” Rey felt tears prick the corner of her eyes. “Han was with her.”

“Han? _Han_?” Ben’s face darkened. “You went behind my back and – and invited _that man_ into my house –”

“It’s not _your_ house.”

“I told you I didn’t want him alone with her!” Ben shouted. “I tried to compromise with you, and you went behind my back.”

“I didn’t mean to!” Rey reached, futilely, for the baby, and then dropped her hand. It was clear he wasn’t going to let go of her, no matter how much she screamed.

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I didn’t plan on leaving her with him. He just knocked on the door one day. At first we just… talked.” That wasn’t a lie. She and Han had passed the baby back and forth and talked about anything _but_ the baby – art school, Ben’s company, the weather, travelling, the new mayor. If there was anything Han could do, it was talk.

“What?” Ben spat out the word. “What the fuck are you talking to my father about?”

“ _Anything_.” Rey balled her fists. “ _She_ can’t talk. I’m alone with her all day and then you come home and you _never talk to me_. He was just keeping me company.” Ben’s mouth creased, as if he was stopping himself from saying something. “And then I just… I just wanted to be away from _her_.”

Ben’s mouth twisted, in what she could swear was disgust. “Why?”

Rey shrugged, helplessly. She couldn’t even understand the impulse herself, so she couldn’t explain it to him. It was a crawling, tight feeling in her chest, as if she would burst out of her skin. She started to cry, both because she hated herself for feeling the way she did, and because of the way he was looking at her. “I don’t know.”

***

When Ben followed her into the bedroom a few minutes later, Rey didn’t turn away from the wall. She curled in on her stomach, the emptiness and slackness of it foreign to her. “There’s a bag of milk in the fridge.”

She heard him shift on the hardwood floors. “Do you want to feed her?”

Rey didn’t answer. She felt his weight settle onto the bed, after a few seconds, and rolled onto her back, begrudgingly. The baby was fiercely suckling on her pacifier, red-faced.

“You think I’m a bad mother.”

“I don’t think that.” He said, quietly. “Here. Take her.” He almost forced the baby into her arms. The infant tried to nurse, dropping her pacifier and searching for a nipple through her shirt. Rey pushed her sweater up and out of the way, clumsily. After two weeks, this somehow still didn’t feel instinctive to her. It must’ve been instinctive to the baby, though, because she latched happily onto her breast.

As her daughter nursed, Rey started to cry in earnest.

“My mom left me at a fire station. She didn’t want me. She didn’t even name me.” She looked up at the ceiling, feeling tears roll down her temples and into her ears. She thought about the names Ben had suggested, and how none of them had seemed right. He’d come up with a new one every day, it seemed. She hadn’t thought of any that she liked. “She left a suicide note with me. What if I’m like her?”

“I didn’t know you...” Ben stopped short. Rey knew what three words were on the tip of his tongue. They were dirty words, words that made her hate herself. He didn’t say them. His largest finger extended out to brush the feathering of dark hair on the baby’s head, and then brushed the back of her hand. “I think you need to talk to someone.”

“I’ve been talking to someone.” Rey sniffed. “Han.”

Ben bit his lip. He was silent for a while, tracing the nape of the baby’s neck above her pink onesie. “And… does that help?”

“Yes.” Strangely, the baby’s nursing was helping, too. It felt oddly soothing. Rey closed her eyes, willing her hiccupping, hitching breath to even out.

“Then keep talking to him.” Ben hesitated. “But I want you to talk to a therapist, too.”

“Ben – ” She choked on his name, shame flooding her. It was hard enough to admit this to him. To talk about it to a stranger sounded unbearable.

“That’s not a request.” He interrupted her. “We need you, so you have to get better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-partum depression is amazingly common, and often, women's partners are totally oblivious to it. That lack of communication, and a sense of shame, can lead to serious consequences. But don't worry, our next few chapters will be much happier and fluffier! 
> 
> P.S. Baby Girl Solo's name has yet to be revealed BUT I will tell you... two of you guessed correctly!


	19. Chapter 19

“Let me guess.” Han patted the baby’s back with a large, calloused hand. Sitting in the corner chair, holding the baby like that, he looked just like Ben. Perhaps that was why Rey felt she had known him for much longer than she really had. He reminded her of Ben in so many ways – his mannerisms, his penchant for sarcasm, his tenderness when he held her daughter. Even his hands and crooked nose were Ben’s. “The therapist is a quack, but the meds are pretty good.”

Rey laughed, startled. “You sound like you’ve been in therapy before.”

“I’ve been in all kinds of therapy.” He didn’t sound like he was joking.

Rey cocked her head, biting into the donut he’d brought her. It was the only thing she’d had an appetite for in two days, and her therapist had asked her to gain weight. She’d lost all of the weight she’d gained during her pregnancy in four weeks, partly because she was breastfeeding, but mostly because she’d barely eaten anything during the first three weeks of her child’s life. Ben had noticed, and had started watching her like a hawk, making sure she choked down at least half of her dinner every night. Han had noticed, too. His approach was to bring donuts, set them wordlessly on the coffee table, and start talking. His approach worked better. “For what?”

Han waved his free hand, dismissively. “Alcohol abuse. Gambling addiction. And manic depressiveness.”

Rey lowered the donut from her mouth. “When?”

“In prison.” Han grinned at her. “Your tax dollars at work.” His face suddenly became more serious. “You know, I probably needed therapy a long time before I got it, but I was too stubborn to ask for help, or to listen to Ben’s mother. Maybe if I hadn’t been such a jackass I would’ve stayed out of trouble.” He cleared his throat. “So I’m glad you’re getting help now, kid. You’ve got a lot of life ahead of you.”

Rey blinked, furiously. “Thank you.”

“What do they have you on?”

“Zoloft.”

“And?”

“It’s helping.” She admitted. She’d been taking it for two weeks. It didn’t make her less exhausted, or less self-conscious about her body. It didn’t displace the itchy feeling she got, the urge to be alone and away from the baby. But it did make her feel more stable. She was in control. When the baby cried and Ben was at work, she didn’t lay in bed for a few minutes, wishing it would just stop.

“Good.” Han played with the baby’s stockinged little feet.

“What do they have you on?” Han looked confused for a moment, and then realized what she was talking about.

“Ben told you about that?”

“Yes.” For some reason, her answer seemed to surprise him.

“I’m not on anything.”

“Why not?”

“Chemo’s a bitch.” Han stopped short. “Sorry. No swearing in front of the kid.”

Rey waved her hand, dismissively. “Does Ben know? That you aren’t doing chemo?”

“No.” Han suddenly looked fierce. She thought of him as a strange friend, who doted on her daughter and had no shortage of odd anecdotes and off-color humor. When he scowled at her, she remembered her was a convict. “And don’t tell him.”

“Why not?” Rey almost asked how long he had left, without chemotherapy, but she didn’t. She didn’t feel she knew Han well enough to ask that, and she didn’t want to know. “If he knew, maybe he would – ”

“Forgive me?” Han interrupted her. “I don’t want him to forgive me just because I’m going to die. I don’t want his pity.” He saw the look on her face and said, sternly, “Or yours.”

***

“So.” Han was back, with more donuts. The baby gurgled happily at him, her brown eyes shining the way they did when she saw her father. “Does the kid have a name yet?”

“Not yet.”

“You have to pick something.” Han told her, walking around the room and gently bouncing the month-old baby in arms – one of Ben’s tricks, too. “I can’t keep calling her _kid_.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s what I call Ben.”

“Oh.” Rey faltered. “I didn’t know that.”

Han looked old, all of the sudden. “He probably didn’t tell you any of the good stuff, did he? It wasn’t all bad.”

They were silent, awkwardly, for a long moment, and then Han deadpanned, “You could always name her after me. I’m sure Ben would love that.”

Rey snorted. “I’m sure he would.”

There was a knock on the door, and Han tensed. Habit, Rey guessed.

“If it’s Ben, I’ll just go climb out the back window.” He remarked,

“Ben never knocks.” Rey told him, going over to the door. She knew Ben and Han in the same room spelled disaster. When she opened the door, she knew that full-on _nuclear war_ was imminent.

“Hello, dear.” Leia said, brightly. “I thought you could use some company. And I made you some lasagna. Comfort food.”

“Did Ben send you to check on me?” Rey tried to block the door with her body.

Leia looked guilty. “No.”

“He did, didn’t he?”

“He asked if I’d stay with the baby while you go to your… appointment.” So Ben had told her, then. Rey shifted on her feet, uncomfortable. She had an irrational desire to impress Leia – to prove to Ben’s mother that _she_ was a good mother, too. Leia’s face softened. “He’s just worried about you.”

Rey looked at the floor, unsure of how to respond to that. “I can bring her with me.”

“I think it would be good for you to have some time to yourself.” Leia practically pushed her way into the house. “And for me to have some time with my grandbaby. Is she asleep?”

Before Rey could stop her, Leia had rounded the corner into the living room. She blanched when she saw her ex-husband. “Han?”

“You changed your hair.” Han said, after a long moment.

Rey exhaled heavily, wondering whether all the Solo men knew exactly the _wrong_ thing to say in moments like this.

“You haven’t changed a bit.” Leia’s voice wavered.

Rey thought about Han’s quiet persistence, getting her to talk and laugh again. She thought about his penchant for donuts, and the funny faces he made at the baby. She thought about how he always asked questions about Ben, as if she was a conduit to his son. She remembered how he always lingered until the last minute, as if he longed to stay at the brownstone long enough to cross paths with Ben. At the last minute, he would lose his nerve and leave.

Leia was wrong, she decided. Han had changed.

***

“Ben.”

“What’s wrong? Is the baby okay?” His immediate panic offended her, a little.

“Your parents are at my house.”

Ben paused for a second. “ _Both_ of my parents?”

“Yes.”

“Call the police.”

“Ben, that’s not funny. He’s on parole.” Rey whispered, looking down the hallway. She’d left the baby with Han and Leia to go change for her appointment. No screaming or crying, yet. “They both want to stay and watch the baby.” She heard him exhale, sharply. “Is that… okay?”

Ben was silent, for a long moment, and then said, flatly, “They couldn’t be in the same room for _my_ sake, but suddenly I have a kid and they want to babysit together?”

“Ben.”

“Fine.” He sounded anything but fine. “It’s fine.”

***

As she crept back down the hallway, Rey pricked her ears to hear Han and Leia’s conversation. “She’s cuter than our kid was as a baby.”

Leia made a soft, amused noise of assent. “I won’t tell him you said that.”

“Rey is cute, too.” Han added, unexpectedly. “Maybe Ben will get his head out of his ass and figure that out eventually.”

“You never did.” Leia told him, sharply.

***

Like he did every day when he came to her brownstone after work, Ben asked her, “Have you thought of a name?”

Today, Rey’s answer was different. “Yes.”

A grin split his face. “Really?”

 “Promise you won’t be mad.” She entreated him. His smile faded a little. He made no promises. “I want to name her Hanna.”

Ben’s shrugged, and then froze, realizing what that name reminded him of. “No.”

“Yes.”

“Rey, no.”

“Ben, _yes_.” Rey crossed her arms across her chest. He hadn’t seen her that defiant in weeks. She hadn’t picked a fight with him since the baby’s birth, but she looked ready to fight to the death, now. She looked like her old self, and it softened him a little.

“I’ll think about it.” He said, finally. Rey beamed at him – that jolted him – and turned to lift the baby from her swing. She cradled her against her chest, walking into the living room.

“Hanna.” Her voice was breathy and sing-song. “Hanna, Hanna, Hanna. Do you like that?”

Ben felt his throat catch, watching them. Rey waltzed around the room, slowly, repeating the name over and over between little kisses on the baby’s face. He’d never seen her so silly with the baby. She was acting love-struck.

The baby was watching her, fascinated. Her little hand, unsteady and uncoordinated, reached for her mother’s cheek. Ben knew he was probably just projecting, but she seemed happy, and equally enamored.

“See, she likes her name.” Rey grinned at him. “You’re outnumbered.”

 “I guess I’m going to have to get used to that.” Ben remarked, mouth dry

“To the name, or being outnumbered?”

“Both.”

***

“Is something going on between you two?” Phasma looked suspicious. Once she’d found out that Ben would have Hanna while Rey went to her weekly coffee group, she’d invited herself and Hux over for dinner.

Rey’s therapist had suggested she join the group of new mothers for coffee once a week. There was only one rule: no talking about babies. Ben had encouraged her to go. He had an ulterior motive, besides her mental health – he wanted to have Hanna at his penthouse for a few hours, and to show her off to his friends. Part of him felt like a constant visitor at the brownstone.

“Me and Rey?” Ben shut the door behind Rey, holding the carseat in one hand. Phasma nodded in the affirmative. “I mean, we had sex.”

“Well, obviously.” Phasma gestured to Hanna. His face must have betrayed his secret, because Phasma suddenly looked delighted. “Wait, you mean _sex_ sex?”

“It was _sex_ sex when we got pregnant.” Ben made a face.

“You two had _sober_ sex?” Hux interjected, incredulously.

“Yes.” Ben admitted.

“When?” Phasma hissed, jumping off the counter and practically dancing with excitement. “Before the baby came?”

“Of course it was before the baby came.” Ben put Hanna in her swing, buckling it carefully. She had near-duplicates of all of her things at his penthouse. She’d never used any of them, and, admittedly, they looked kind of silly in his sleek penthouse. Still, she seemed happy enough with her spoils. “She’s only five weeks old.”

“And?” Phasma looked puzzled.

“You’re not supposed to have sex for six weeks after having a baby.”

“You’ve thought about this.” Hux noted, grinning devilishly.

“I’ve just read a lot of baby books.” Ben cracked open a beer. He took a swill of it to avoid eye contact. His two friends exchanged a knowing look. 

 “You’re going to jump her bones next week.” Phasma looked smug. “Don’t deny it.”

***

When Rey came to pick Hanna up, Phasma and Hux had left. Ben watched her nuzzle Hanna’s cheeks where she slept in her duplicate pop-up crib, her eyes damp.

 “Did you eat?”

“No, I’m okay.” Rey gave him a little smile, straightening up. “Not hungry.”

“I have leftovers.” He cajoled. “I made Italian. And you’re too thin.”

Rey made a soft, self-conscious noise. “You haven’t seen my stomach recently.”

He had, in fact, but he didn’t correct her. She went to great lengths to try and hide it when she was breastfeeding. As gratifying as it was to see her in his button-up shirts, he wished she wouldn’t be so self-conscious. She wasn’t any less attractive. She was just _softer_. Her stomach was slightly curved and rounded at the bottom, right above her pelvis. He wondered if she would feel softer now, too, if he laid his head against her breasts or belly, as if her body was adapted to nurture and comfort.

She scarfed down the pasta, despite her protestations. Ben watched, approvingly. “Go okay tonight?”

“Yes.” She paused with a forkful halfway to her mouth. “You don’t have to come over tonight, you know.” She saw his face and said, quickly, “I don’t mean – I just, I can do this myself. I’m not feeling so… overwhelmed.”

Ben nodded, mutely, at a loss for words. He ostensibly spent his evenings at her townhouse so he could see his child, and his nights there so he could help Rey. Tonight, he’d had Hanna to himself all evening, and Rey looked happier and calmer than she had since the baby’s birth. He had no excuse to spend the night with them.

He wanted to, though.

***

 “Rey.” She turned half-around, in the doorway, Hanna tucked against her chest in a wrap. For the first time, Ben was struck by the fact that she and Hanna looked alike. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Ben, I’m fine.” Rey stuck out her chin. “I’m her mother. I can do this.”

“I know. I trust you.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I just want to make sure.”

“We’ll be okay.” She grasped Hanna’s tiny little hand, free of the snug wrap, and moved it back and forth. “Say ‘night-night, Daddy’.”

“Night-night, sweetheart.” Ben hunched over to look at his daughter. She gave him a solemn look, as if she was confused that he wasn’t coming with them, and he couldn’t help but kiss her small, wrinkled forehead.

As he straightened, Ben kissed Rey’s forehead too, without stopping to consider whether it was a good idea. They were standing very close, and she was stock-still, the baby squiriming between them. He felt her inhale sharply, surprised, against his neck. Against her hairline, he murmured, “Goodnight, Mommy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, are Leia and Han going to reconcile their differences? Are Ben and Han? And, most importantly, is Ben really going to jump Rey's bones next week?
> 
> P.S. A few of you have asked why Leia hasn't been around - the answer is, she has. But since she doesn't have a close relationship witb Rey, she's been around when Ben is there, too.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference: https://www.renttherunway.com/shop/designers/nha_khanh/red_rue_dress

"Where are you?” Rey answered the phone without any niceties. The answer was _in his bathroom_ , fresh out of the shower, but he didn’t get into specifics. It was oddly gratifying to hear the agitation in her voice. This was the first day he hadn’t come to her brownstone after he left the office, and he was secretly pleased that she noticed his absence, and was annoyed by it.

“I have to go to a thing for work.” He playing with the garment bag hanging from a hook in his bathroom “Can I stop by for a goodnight kiss?”

“From Hanna?” She asked, and then suddenly went silent. He could practically hear her mortification. He coughed, delicately, and she recovered. “She’ll be awake in about an hour.”

“See you then.”

***

Rey’s jaw dropped when he came in the door, and that was gratifying, too. “I thought you said you were going to a work thing.”

“Strictly speaking, it’s a charity gala.” He fixed the cufflinks on his tuxedo, to keep his nervous hands busy. He’d had an idea in the car. “I don’t have a date, actually.” He paused, and when she didn’t volunteer, outright asked, “Want to make me look good?”

Rey looked down at her clothing – a t-shirt, with baby spit-up on it, and baggy jeans. She looked back at him, in all his well-tailored glory, and shook her head. “You’re joking, right?”

“I’m serious.”

“I’d just embarrass you.” She smoothed Hanna’s downy, fluffy hair, hair that had finally sprung from her scalp in this, her sixth week of life. “Anyways, Hanna and I have big plans. We’re going to try tummy time and then take a bath.” She saw the look on his face. “What?”

“I already called my mother and asked her to babysit.”

“ _Ben_.” Rey looked exasperated, but he was _almost_ certain she was just pretending. “I don’t have anything to wear.” She fell back onto that excuse.

Ben took Hanna out of her arms. “Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?” Her jaw flapped open.

“Bull. Shit.” Ben repeated himself, slowly. “You just think you don’t look good in anything anymore.”

Her mouth snapped shut, and her eyes narrowed. After a minute, she said, “Yes.”

“Well, you’re wrong.”

***

Ben busied himself with Hanna for thirty minutes, changing her diaper and then reading her a book that she clearly thought was boring – she fell asleep, snoring lightly. He put her in her swing and turned it on low, watching her swing back and forth, deep in slumber, until he heard his name.

Rey was sitting on the edge of her bed, a full-skirted red dress bunched up around her knees. One of her feet was wedged, unsuccessfully, halfway into a shoe.

“My shoes don’t fit.” She had put on makeup, and she looked like she was about to cry and ruin in. “My feet got bigger when I was pregnant.”

Ben squatted by her feet, grasping her ankle and trying to fit the shoe onto her foot. When she winced and hissed, he pulled it off completely, and tossed it across the room. He straightened up, and held his hand out to her, theatrically.

“I can’t go.” Rey protested, sitting on her hands. “I don’t have shoes.”

“Come on, Cinderella.” He waited for her to take his hand, and pulled her to her feet. “We’ll stop on the way.”

***

At the gala – for some sort of children’s fund, an unlikely beneficiary of First Order Investments, she thought – Rey felt like a misfit in stupidly expensive shoes from Barney’s and a three-year-old dress. She’d bought the tulle and lace garment second-hand in Brooklyn, when she was twenty-two. She’d bought it because it reminded her of a ballerina or a fairy: it was whimsical, full-skirted, and bright-colored. Those were all the things that she felt self-conscious about, now. The other women here were in sleek, black sheaths that fell to the floor, or jewel tones.  

A large, warm hand settled on the small of her back, and she jumped a little. Ben gave her a reassuring look, which didn’t go unnoticed by the older man to her right. She’d been told his name, in a hot whisper in her ear, but she couldn’t remember it, or anyone else’s.

“I don’t believe you’ve introduced me to your wife, Ben.”

Ben, to his credit, didn’t even flinch. “I don’t believe I have. Rey, this is Mr. Sheckil.”

The man offered her a flute. “Champagne?”

Rey accepted the glass, put it to her lips, and started to sip, then stopped.

“I’m sorry, I can’t.” Ben gave her an odd look and she explained, in a hushed voice, “I have to feed the baby when we get home.”

His brow creased. “Did you pump enough for the night?”

“No, I –” Rey suddenly became aware that the group of people they were standing amongst had gone completely silent. They’d been speaking softly, but their fellow party-goers were looking at them like they were aliens. This was a perfectly normal topic of conversation  for them – better, even than the conversations they had about diaper changes and spit-up – and they’d forgotten that most people, especially glitzy, corporate types, would find it bizarre in mixed company.

Before she could apologize, Ben said, by way of explanation, “We’re new parents.”

Rey couldn’t help but notice the twinge of pride in his voice. He didn’t seem to notice the looks on his colleagues’ faces.

***

Ben was on his fourth glass of champagne and feeling particularly brave about introducing Rey as his wife, this time to investors, when a peculiar look crossed Rey’s face. Her back went stiff underneath his hand, and he looked at her, questioningly. She’d gone bright red, as red as the dress he liked so much. After a mumbled excuse, she excused herself.

***

 “Rey?” Ben had followed her to the bathroom. He tapped on the door, gently. “Everything okay?”

“I’m fine!” Her voice was high-pitched, as if she was in pain or trying not to cry. Whichever it was, she did not sound _fine_.

“I’m coming in.”

Rey was standing in front of the sink, the lacy bodice of the red dress bunched around her waist. She was holding wads of toilet paper to her nipples. He thought she’d been crying, but he realized, when she looked at him, that her voice had sounded funny because she was trying not to _laugh_. “I couldn’t wear a nursing bra under this dress.”

“Are you _lactating_?” Ben felt a nervous giggle bubble to his lips.

“It’s not funny!” She was trying not to laugh even as she said it. “I’m at this fancy party and I’m _leaking_.”

Eyes watering with the effort of not laughing, Ben choked out, “No, it’s not funny.”

Rey groaned. “Help me clean this up.”

She sat on the edge of the sink, hopelessly dabbing the wet mess on her naked chest. Ben grabbed a paper towel and tried to clean off the milk stains on her dress, to little avail, bending over her to work.

“It keeps _coming_.” Rey sounded equal parts horrified and embarassed. “Oh my _god_.”

The door to the bathroom swung open just as she said that.

“Oh my _god_.” A stranger’s voice echoed her sentiment. The stranger sounded offended, rather than exasperated. “In the ba – _excuse me_.”

The door slammed shut again, and Ben and Rey looked at each other. With her hands still holding soggy toilet paper to her breasts, Rey deadpanned, “You know she’s going to tell everyone we're having sex in here.”

Ben’s efforts to not laugh were suddenly all in vain. He leaned on her shoulder, bent double with laughter. After a second, Rey gave in too. She covered her mouth with her hands, tears of mirth filling her eyes. They sounded like a pair of asthmatics, unable to speak for laughing.

When he’d finally caught his breath, Ben managed to ask, voice hitching, “Want to get out of here?”

***

Rey was very warm and content, curled up under the covers with her sleepy, yawning baby. Her uncomfortable shoes were off and Hanna was milk-drunk, her little cheek still pressed against her mother’s chest. Her skin was so soft and warm that Rey couldn’t bear to peel her off and pull back up the strap of her ruined dress to cover herself. Playing with her daughter’s tuft of dark hair, she told her, “At least one of us got to get drunk tonight.”

“Rey.” Ben’s bow-tie was unfastened around his neck, and she noticed, for the first time all night, that he had dark circles under his eyes. They made him look much less intimidatingly glamorous. “I want to stay the night.”

“You can stay.” Rey adjusted Hanna in her arms, snuggling further down into the pillows. He sat, on the end of the bed, resting his hand on her foot where it lay under the covers.

He hesitated. “I want you to _ask_ me to stay the night.”

“Stay the night.”

A little smile crossed Ben's face. He leaned over her, very precariously, and she wondered if he was going to kiss her. He didn’t. He eased Hanna out of her arms and rose off the mattress, fluidly, laying her down in her bassinet and bending over it to kiss her head. When he turned around and saw that Rey was lifting the strap of her dress up, to cover the breast Hanna had been nursing at, he blurted out, “Don’t.”

Rey stopped, suddenly very aware of how exposed she was. She hadn’t been aware of that when she’d been breastfeeding and cuddling Hanna. Ben was looking at her like _he’d_ been aware of it, though.

“Hanna’s six weeks old today.” He told her, quietly. He stood at the foot of the bed unfastening his cuffs, slowly. His jacket was long gone, having been wrapped around her shoulders to hide the stains on her dress.

Rey fidgeted, resisting the powerful urge to lift the coverlet and cover her exposed breast. She was vaguely aware of his implication, and she knew she ought to correct him, to say that she wasn’t ready, that she was afraid he wouldn’t like how her body looked, that she was afraid it would hurt. She didn’t saying anything but, “I know.”

His eyes were very dark as he sat back down on the bed, planting one arm on each side of her waist, and loomed over her, predatorily.

“Ben.” She said his name, stupidly, and something flashed across his face. Without breaking eye contact until he had to, he leaned down, and kissed the top of her breast. His lips were very dry and smooth on her skin.

Rey sucked in a deep breath, surprised, but didn’t stop him. Then his mouth was open, and hot, and wet, on her skin. He left a mark there, where he’d kissed her, and then moved down, swirling his tongue in a broad circle around her nipple. His mouth closed around the point of it, and suddenly she was yanking his hair, frantically, as if a trance had been broken. “No, don’t.”

He looked up at her, still straining towards her breast, as if her hands in his hair were the only thing keeping his mouth off it.

“Those are for the baby now.” She didn’t know how else to say it. He laughed, a deep, melodious laugh that was totally different from their episode in the restroom at the gala.

“Daddy likes them, too.” His eyes twinkled, as if he knew what that word, in _this_ context did to her. When she didn’t answer – she was momentarily speechless - he reached up for the other strap of her dress and pulled it down, settling the fabric around her waist. Resting his weight on his elbows, he peppered the other breast with kisses, nuzzling in between the two.

When he went back to her nipple, she grabbed his hair again. “No.”

“I’ll be careful.” His voice was muffled. “No sucking. Just let me give you kisses.”

She did, and true to his word, he didn’t. What she had been dreading – the strange, burning sensation of milk letting down – didn’t come, but still, somehow, she felt whatever was left from feeding the baby leak, trickling between her breasts.

Rey covered her face with her hands, groaning, her arousal fizzling out. “Oh my god. I’m sorry.”

Ben wiped his face on the sheets, unbothered, and then, with utmost tenderness, tugged the edge of the sheet over and wiped her cleavage clean. He planted a chaste kiss on her sternum, as if to say, _all better_ , and then sat up on his knees over her. With a look of great concentration, he pulled her dress down, until it was half covering her stomach. She wondered if he could see the silvery lines on the sides of her hips, and the little pouch of fat and skin at the bottom of her abdomen.

“Wait, wait.” Self-conscious panic made her frantic, even if she was still whispering so they didn't wake Hanna.

Ben looked up at her, concentration broken. His mouth was flushed and hanging open. “Do you want me to put the baby in the nursery?”

“No.” Rey found herself whispering. “I don’t want to wake her.”

He nodded, satisfied that she meant _keep going anyways_ , and then kept tugging. When her navel was exposed, he put his mouth back on her body, this time, on the protrusion of her hip bone. “ _Ben_.”

“What?” He sounded a little frustrated at this interruption.

“I don’t want to do this in front of the baby.” It sounded like a weak excuse, even to her ears. She stared at the ceiling, afraid to look at him. Ben was still for a long moment, and then he kept pulling her dress down. His hands felt different this time, less sensual, more purposeful.  “Ben, I…” _I don’t want to do this._

“Hush.” He’d gotten the dress all the way off, but then, he was getting off the bed. He balled up the wet garment and tossed it in the hamper, and then took pajamas out of her drawer. He came back to bed and said, softly, “Arms up.”

She obeyed, like a child, and he pulled the pajama shirt over her head. He put her legs into the pants, one foot at a time, and then tugged them up. Next, he pulled up the covers, tucking them carefully around her. Wordlessly, he pressed a kiss onto the tip of her nose, and then stood up with a little huff.  

“Where are you going?” 

He made a wry, self-deprecating noise. “I’m going to go take a cold shower.”

“I’m sorry.” She breathed. 

“Don’t be.” He hesitated in the door to the bathroom. “I didn’t mean to rush you. I can wait.”

Rey winced. “Ben.” She stopped him again. “Don’t wait.”

He stiffened, suddenly. “What?”

“Don’t wait for me.” Rey took a deep breath. “I don’t think we should have sex. If we’re going to be platonic co-parents.” 

Ben’s jaw tightened. He gave her a long look, and now he _did_ look disappointed, in a way he hadn’t when she’d cut off his sexual advances. Before he shut the bathroom door, he told her in a low voice, one that suggested he was more hurt than he’d ever let on, “I didn’t think we were platonic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben Solo caught feelings. Who didn't see this coming.
> 
> P.S. You can expect one or two more chapters before I go on a holiday sebatical. I'll still be drafting and writing, but I will likely not publish very often during the holidays. Absence makes the heart grow fonder?


	21. Chapter 21

Rey listened to the shower running for a few minutes before she heard a loud, “ _Fuck_!”

She sat up, startled, and looked over at the bassinet. Hanna stirred, snuffled quietly, and went back to sleep. Carefully, she laid back down, and resumed staring at the ceiling. A few seconds later she heard another obscenity. Neither of these words sounded like they were shouted out in the heat of the moment. Ben sounded angry.

Rey was angry, too.

Growling out a four-letter word of her own, she got out of bed. She stalked over to the bathroom and went inside it. Ben was toweling off. When his face emerged from underneath the towel, he gave her a baleful look. “What do you want?”

“You’re going to wake Hanna up.” She shut the door behind her and leaned on it, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You shouldn’t have come in here if you didn’t want to wake Hanna up.” He told her, flatly. “We’re just going to fight.”

“I’m not trying to fight.” He glared at her, naked and dripping wet. Rey caught herself looking below his chin and forced herself not to. She tilted her chin up, fiercely. “I’m trying to explain – ”

“There’s nothing to explain.” Ben interrupted her. “You were very clear.”

 “We’re _parents_.” Rey hissed at him, losing her temper and wishing she could yell. She’d come into the bathroom with the best of intentions – to make him listen to reason, and to get that horrible, hurt look off of his face – but she’d forgotten them, now. “We have to do what’s best for our daughter.”

Ben barked out a laugh. “I don’t even know what you mean. You know what normal parents do? They kiss and they have sex and they live together.”

“Not your parents.” She shot back, no caring if that particular barb hurt him.

He ignored it. “And parents have fights and break up all the time. Their kids turn out fine. What are you so afraid of? That it will work out between us, or that it won’t?”

Rey gaped at him. They’d danced around this issue for so long that it was surreal to hear him address it aloud. “We can’t get involved and then – then _not_ be. It’s not fair to Hanna.”

“Hanna?” Ben’s mouth twisted, cruelly. “Hanna is a _baby._ She doesn’t know whether we’re involved or not. You’re protecting yourself, not Hanna.”

 “I _do_ have to protect her. You threatened to take her away from me once.” Rey snapped. “Or don’t you remember that?”

That stung. She saw the color rise in his cheeks. His voice rose, for the first time since they’d been together in the steamy, cramped bathroom. “No. Stop talking about _Hanna_. This has nothing to do with Hanna. I would never hurt her or take her away from you.” When she couldn’t say anything, because she _believed_ him, he added, harshly, “This is about you and me.”

Rey faltered for a moment. “If we hadn’t gotten pregnant, we would never have seen each other again.”

Ben’s fists curled. “Well, we did get pregnant, and now we have to live with it.”

Rey blinked at him, somewhat offended. A loner by nature, she’d nonetheless always privately fantasized about falling in love – _true_ love, for lack of a less theatrical word. When she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d had to let go of a part of that fantasy. She wouldn’t meet a man, and fall madly in love with him, and marry him, and start a family with him. Her life would play like a movie out of order.

She’d begun to think that she would never fall in love. She had Hanna, and, for better or for worse, that meant she had Ben. There wasn’t room for anyone else. They could fall into bed together. It would be easy. Convenient, even.

Ben, she was sure, was settling for her because she was convenient. He didn’t love her.

When she didn’t saying anything, Ben exhaled, heavily. He balled up his discarded clothes and reached around her to the doorknob.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m sleeping on the couch.” He half-turned around, looking almost disappointed by the question. “Did you think I was leaving because we had a fight?” Rey was silent. She had, but she wouldn’t admit it. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he had left, either. “You don’t walk out on your family.” He told her, stiffly.

“Ben.” She stopped him with a hand on his bicep. It was still slick with droplets of water that had gone cold. “Would you want _me_ – just me – if it weren’t for Hanna?”

Ben gave her a long, appraising look, and her stomach sunk. He didn’t answer her question, directly, perhaps because his honest answer wouldn’t be satisfactory. “Do you think I love Hanna?”

“What?”

“Do I love Hanna?”

“Yes.” He did, with the kind of single-minded devotion that even Rey, the baby’s mother, couldn’t understand. For the past ten months, his world had revolved around the baby, it had seemed. There was no room for anyone else – including her.

“I didn’t plan on Hanna.” He told her, bluntly. His voice cracked a little. “But I love her. And you love her.” Rey nodded, numbly. She could see where this was going, and she was powerless to stop it. It made _sense_ , in a way.

Ben was leaning a little closer, his breath warm on her face. “Is it so crazy to think that we could love each other, too?”

Rey looked at his lips, unconsciously wetting hers. She could only describe the look on his face as _longing_ and the tone of his voice as wistful. It was uncharacteristic. As she stared at his mouth – red, parted – the longing on his face became desire, pure and unadulterated.

“Rey.” His voice was breathy – also uncharacteristic. “Do you want me to sleep on the couch?”

“Yes.” Rey breathed. They were close enough to kiss, and she found that she wanted to kiss him.

As Ben started to pull away, she wrapped her hand around his neck, and pulled his face down to hers. He understood, then, what she meant.

***

Wordlessly, Ben carried Rey to the couch, and they bore down onto it together, their mouths missing each other’s. His knee found its way in between hers as they sunk into the cushions, and suddenly he was crushing her, grinding her into the couch.

“Ben,” Rey’s voice hitched. “I’m not ready.”

“I know.” He barely lifted his lips from the skin of her neck to reassure her. His fingers tugged at the neck of her pajamas, exposing the edge of her collarbone, and then he kissed there, too.

Her pajama pants shimmied off, somehow, between her hands and his, even though she _wasn’t ready_. He was already naked and _right there_ , pressing eagerly against the inside of her thigh, leaving a little trail of slick pre-cum every time he rotated his hips and inched closer to her cunt.

“Ben.”

“I know.” He hushed her with a kiss, and he felt the head of his cock bump against her. When she flinched away, he whispered against her mouth, again, more like a benediction than a reassurance, “I know.”

The length of his erection slid along the crease at the apex of her thighs, and she thought he’d tried to thrust into her, and missed. Then he did it again, with a heady, deep groan, and she understood. He rocked against her a few more times, and then grunted, swore, and rearranged his comically large limbs on the sofa, rolling onto his side and pulling her back and bottom against his stomach and chest.

Rey’s thighs were sticky and soaked by now, and his cock glided between in between them easily. When she squeezed her legs together tighter, he moaned into her ear incoherently. Every time he pushed in between her legs, the ridge at the top of his member caught on her clitoris and made her twitch and bite her lip.

“Don’t.” Rey panted, when his hands found her breasts and squeezed them. “I don’t want to – ” She made a strange, inhuman little noise. “ – make a mess.”

“This is going to be messy. Anyways.” Ben told her, choppily. He was right – it was a messy, sloppy thing they were doing. If they hadn’t left a wet spot yet, they were going to. Rey laughed, breathily, and wrapped her hands around his forearms, keeping them wrapped around her neck and safely away from her breasts.

When his breathing got harsh, he tugged his arms free of her grip and fumbled his fingers down between her legs. The pad of his forefinger pushed up under hood of her clitoris and she was done for, burying her face in the couch cushion to stifle the little squeals she made.

When she was done, his hand was as slick as her thighs. Ben wrapped that hand around his cock and pressed the head of it to her lower abdomen as he orgasmed, making a feral, strained sound deep in his chest. His spend was sticky and hot, trapped between his cupped palm and her stomach. It leaked over his fingers in warm rivulets, onto the couch, and across her stomach, into her navel. They’d made the mess he promised.

Ben didn’t love her, and she didn’t love him.

But he was right, Rey conceded, as he kissed her shoulder, open-mouthed, and exhaled in satisfaction against it. It wasn’t such a crazy idea.

***

“Did Hanna sleep through the night?” Ben asked Rey, groggily, still splayed out on the couch.

“No, I fed her again at three.” Rey sat, cross-legged, in the corner chair, and set Hanna in the crook of her knees. She made a funny face at the baby and earned a little coo that was halfway to a real smile.

Ben blinked at her, rubbing his eyes in the morning light. “I don’t remember that.”

“You slept through it.”

“Oh.” He huffed, sitting up, slowly. “I’m sorry.”

“You were tired.” She allowed. “It’s okay.”

Ben watched them making faces for a second, and then said, abruptly, “I don’t think I can keep doing this.” Rey looked up, sharply, and seeing her face, he clarified. “Going back and forth like this. I’m not sleeping enough.” He paused, and then blurted out, “We could get a bigger place –”

Before he could finish, and before Rey could respond – before she could even consider what her response would be – his phone started ringing.

“Hold that thought.” Ben rose off the couch, leaned over the chair, and pecked her mouth, briefly. It was a startlingly familiar gesture, somehow more intimate than what they’d done that night on the couch. As the phone kept ringing, he got on his knees, looking for his tuxedo pants. “Who the fuck is calling me at seven the morning?”

***

Rey lied to the nurses and said she was Han’s daughter-in-law. As she was ushered back behind the reception desk, the attending physician debriefed her. Han had been found by his landlord, passed out on the floor of the laundry room in the basement of his building in Washington Heights. One of the ulcers in his stomach had ruptured, and he’d lost blood. He was okay for now, the doctor told her outside his room, but not for long.

“Hey kiddo.” Han looked disgruntled, at best, when she crept into his room. “You didn’t have to come. I’m fine.”

Rey perched, carefully, on the chair near his bed. “Ben’s at home with the baby.” She explained, even though Han hadn’t asked. “He didn’t want to expose her to all the germs.”

“I didn’t expect him to come.” Han told her, stiffly. They were silent for a moment, and then Han said, “You have to get me out of here. I can’t afford this shit.”

“It’s taken care of.” Rey interrupted him. “You can stay as long as you need. Ben wanted you to know that.”

Han looked at his hands on the top of the hospital blanket. They looked like an old man’s hands, and very bony. Han’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet. “Tell him thank you.” He shifted, just slightly, and added, gruffly. “But I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to die in a hospital.”

Rey swallowed, hard. Her first instinct – a generous one, as usual – was to invite him to stay with her. She knew Ben would never allow it, though. “You won’t.”

“Well, I will die.” Han gave her a wry smile. “It just sure as hell won’t be here.”

***

When Rey got back to the brownstone, Ben was in her bed. Hanna was asleep on her back in the middle of the mattress, and his larger body was curled around her like a half-moon. Ben saw her watching him from the doorframe, and then looked back at his sleeping daughter. His mouth set in a deep crease.

“He told me he had five years.” His voice was very low. “He said the prognosis was good.”

Rey sat carefully on the edge of the bed. “He isn’t doing chemo.”

“Why not?” Ben didn’t take his eyes off Hanna.

“He told me it wasn’t worth it at his age.” Even as she said it, Rey didn’t quite believe it.

“So.” It was obvious Ben didn’t believe it, either. He sounded almost angry. “How long?”

“A few months, maybe” She admitted.

Ben’s jaw twitched. Under his breath, he said, “That bastard.”

“Ben.”

Ben rolled onto his back, putting his hand over his mouth. He held it there for a second, and then, when he moved it, his words spilled out of them, as if he’d been physically holding them back. “It’s so selfish. To die like that when he could get treatment and live.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “He was always so selfish.”

Rey eased down onto the bed, stroking Hanna’s little foot through her onesie. She didn’t understand Ben’s grief, on some level. He didn’t seem to love his father, but his emotions, when confronted with his imminent death, were visceral.

“I used to think my mother was selfish.” She ventured. “Because she killed herself. She never told my father about me, and so she left me without a mother _or_ a father. And I thought that was the most selfish decision anyone could ever make.” She saw that Ben was listening to her, even if he was staring at the ceiling. She saw a silvery drop descended his temple from the corner of his eye. “But now I know that she was sick and she had to go. I just wish I could tell her that I forgive her. I hope… I hope she didn’t die feeling guilty.”

Ben was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, in a low voice, “You’re a better person than I am. I don’t know if I can forgive him.”

Rey reached over the baby and wiped the errant tear from his temple. He flinched. “You still have a little time.”

Ben wrapped his fingers around hers, pressed them to the side of his face, and didn’t say anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Rey is not without her reasons for being stand-offish, and she's not incapable of communication. Ye of little faith. 
> 
> P.S. On a more serious note, there was quite a reaction to the last chapter's ending. I will be honest: some of the comments made me consider making major changes. Ultimately, I decided against that. But, I did read each and every comment and made quite a few tweaks within the framework of my original story. Ultimately a periodically published piece like this is an interactive, collaborative experience, so I value all of your criticism and commentary.


	22. Chapter 22

Ben started sleeping in Rey’s bed. For the most part, they slept, exhausted by new parenthood, but when they didn’t, they talked, in hushed tones.

Ben was a planner. When they talked, he talked in big pictures, in abstracts, and in long-term goals. Rey did not. She didn’t reflect on the past, either. To her, each day was a lifetime, full of infinite details. Some of them were boring, or depressing – she hadn’t gotten out of her pajamas today. She hadn’t found any job listings for an art major. Some details deserved to be recounted in great detail – at two months, Hanna had learned to stiffen the muscles at the back of her neck and lift her head during tummy time. She’d made a sound that was almost a laugh. She had a rash, or she was colicky.

When she’d told him about her and Hanna’s day, and he’d gone off on some tangent about taking the baby upstate in a few months to see the leaves change color, his hands would find their way under her shirt and into her underwear, inevitably. He’d whisper the same question against her neck every time they did: _did she want him to put Hanna in her nursery?_

Her answer was always _no_ , but it was harder and harder to say that one syllable every time he asked the question. It was especially hard when he eased down her body and lifted one thigh over his shoulder and breathed onto her sex. She’d pant and put her hand over her mouth as he licked and suckled at her sex to avoid chanting _yes, yes, yes._

***

The palliative care center in Brooklyn didn’t look quite like a hospital, or a jail. Ben waited in the room, studying the vaguely soothing floral artwork on the walls. One picture, of a lily, was directly across from the bed. It was odd to Ben that they’d positioned it there, so it would be the last thing the person temporarily occupying the room would see before their inevitable death. Better than religious artwork, he decided, at least in his father’s case.

“Ben.”

Ben turned around to face him. His father looked very small, in a wheelchair. “Hi, Dad.”

Han looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, when he heard that. Ben hadn’t called him that for years. Finally, he said, gruffly, “This is a nice place.” 

“You don’t have to stay here.” Ben looked at his shoes. “You could go back to the hospital and start chemo instead.”

“I’ve spent enough time in the hospital.” Han told him. He’d been there for two weeks. “And anyways, it’s too late for that.”

“Why?” He hated how young and frustrated he sounded. He’d taken the subway and then a taxi to the hospice, wanting to prolong the journey from the West Village to the southern end of Brooklyn. On the way, he’d practiced being stoic. He’d practiced what he was going to say. He should have known he’d sound like a little boy.

“I got to meet my granddaughter. And my future daughter in law.” Ben laughed, despite himself. Han smiled, as if he enjoyed the sound of his laughter. “I’m ready, Ben.”

“I’m not.” Ben blurted out. “I…” He ran his hand over his hair, and paced around the room. It wasn’t very big. Maybe just a little bigger than a jail cell. “I need… something. Closure.” Anger that had been repressed for years flared up. “I know I’m supposed to forgive you before you die. I’m not ready to do that. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.”

Han was still looking out the window. He didn’t respond to Ben’s outburst.

“Come back next week.” He flexed his fingers, very carefully, on the arms of the wheelchair, and then locked the wheels and stood, with great effort. “I’ll still be here.”

***

Rey looked at Finn’s number on the screen of her cell phone for a long time before she dialed it. She hadn’t exchanged more than a two or three text messages with him in two weeks, out a nagging sense of guilt. She couldn’t quite place the source of the guilt. It stemmed from the fact that she was talking to Finn, and spending her nights being groped and kissed by Ben, but she wasn’t sure if she felt guilty because Ben _knew_ Finn liked her, or because Finn _didn’t_ know she was involved with Ben.

“Rey?” Finn sounded almost relieved when he picked up the phone.

“Hi, Finn.” Her voice sounded falsely cheerful. “What are you doing tonight?”

***

“Ben, you’re glowing. Are you pregnant?” Hux asked, wryly, sauntering into Ben’s office at five-thirty in the evening. Ben felt too smug to be annoyed. He had a date with Rey, a real date, not take-out and television and praying the baby didn’t cry. He’d been all over her for two weeks, and tonight, _tonight_ , he was hoping, he’d be inside of her. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk.

“I’m taking Rey out to dinner.”

Hux cocked his head to the side. “And?”

“It’s a date.” Ben clarified.

“I repeat. _And_?” Hux’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “A _first_ date?”

“We’ve been busy.” Ben defended himself, suddenly realizing how ludicrous Hux must have thought the whole thing was. “We have a twelve-pound terrorist at home.”

“You’re really do this out of order, aren’t you?” Hux remarked. “You’re not bring the adorable terrorist with you, are you? Because if you do, your chances of getting laid are –”

“Hanna’s godfather is babysitting her.” Ben interrupted him.

“That should have been me, you know.”

“I’m sorry.” Ben folded his arms behind his head. He agreed; while Finn was godfather in name only, since they still hadn’t resolved the question of whether to baptize Hanna, he’d prefer Finn be nothing but a friend. That’s all FInn was to Rey, after all, Ben reassured himself. He wondered if Rey had told Finn that. “You and Phas can babysit anytime you want. It’s great birth control.”

“Ben?” Ben saw Hux smirk at the way he almost fell out of his chair when Rey peeked into his office. He stumbled to his feet, nervous as a fifteen-year-old on his first date. The red-headed mad cleared the smirk off of his face before Rey saw him. “Hi, Hux.”

Despite his neutral expression, Hux still sounded mischievous. “You look especially lovely tonight, Rey.”

“Watch it.” As he put his hand on the small of Rey’s back and steered her out of the room before Hux could make an embarrassing comment, Ben saw, out of the corner of his eye, his friend give him a thumbs-up.

***

When they got home from dinner, Finn left quickly. Ben had expected him be spiteful, when he realized _why_ he’d been babysitting. He didn’t. He looked almost resigned. Ben wondered, again, whether Rey had told him they were – _what, a couple? Dating? Sleeping together?_ That last one wasn’t true, quite yet.

Rey went into the bedroom and stood over Hanna’s crib, watching her sleep. Ben followed her and wrapped his arms around her midsection, resting his chin on her shoulder. He watched their daughter, too. Every time he saw her, something minute had changed about her, it seemed. It was incredible to him that they had created something that had been perfect, upon arrival, but still changed every day.

They’d walked past a newly constructed loft, a refurbished warehouse in Tribeca, on their way back to the brownstone. It had a for sale sign in the window. He’d squeezed her hand and dragged her to a stop in front of it. He’d tilted his head back to study studied the sign in the fourth-floor window, pretending his heartbeat didn’t speed up when she wrapped her arm around his waist and leaned into him.

“What?” She’d asked, finally, when he looked at her with a quirk of his lips.

“Nice place.” He’d said, simply. She’d grabbed his lapels, pulled him down, making his knees bend, and kissed him soundly.

Now, in front of Hanna’s bassinet, he was kissing her neck. He asked the same, soft question he always did. “Do you want me to put Hanna in her nursery?”

Tonight, her answer was different. She’d drunk wine with dinner, for the first time in eleven months, and her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were dilated and bright, when she craned her neck to look back and up at him. “Yes.”

***

Ben would had never predicted that slow-paced missionary-position sex in a mostly-dark room would be the best sex of his life. His proclivities were more adventurous. He’d never even fantasized about sex like that.

But after what seemed like countless therapy sessions, and post-partum appointments, and nights where he’d had to soothe his sense of rejection and his raging erection in the bathroom, he was having sex with Rey, not to put her into labor, not because they were drunk, but because she _wanted_ to, and _that_ made it the best sex he’d ever had.

He’d put Hanna in her crib and crept out of her nursery, silently mouthing to her that he would put her up for adoption if she woke up. She didn’t, and when he got back to Rey’s bedroom, she was naked. He’d stopped short. He hadn’t seen her completely naked since she’d given birth to Hanna.

“Don’t say that I look perfect.” She stopped him when he opened his mouth. “I know I look different.”

Ben shut his mouth. “I wasn’t going to say anything. My jaw just dropped.” She flushed, at that, and looked down as he walked closer. When he was within reach, he stripped of his own clothes, unceremoniously. They laid, almost formally, on the bed, facing each other.

Ben waited for her, and, whether with impatience or nerves, Rey huffed and grabbed his arm, pulling him over to her. She rolled onto her back as he arranged his limbs on top of her, almost awkwardly, wiggling his hips to fit them between her thighs. He almost asked if she was sure – did he really want to know the answer to that? – but when her legs were wrapped around his waist and his erection brushed against her sex, she _felt_ sure.

Somehow, penetrating her felt easier and more natural then it had before. Ben kissed her to distract her as he slid inside, expecting her to hiss or protest, or to have to ease in. He didn’t. Her body accepted his, as if the changes it had undergone had made her more suited to him. Even so, when he was fully seated in her, the fit of their bodies was still snug enough to make him groan.

“Is slow good for you?” Rey’s breath hitched nervously, when he rocked carefully against her, not withdrawing from her body at all.

“Slow is good.” He wasn’t pacifying her; he wanted this to last, and last. He pulled halfway out and sunk in again, with a satisfied, rumbly grunt. “Slow is great.”

They started slow, and stayed slow, but Rey’s orgasm was anything but. She panted quietly against his neck, as if afraid Hanna would overhear, and then started swearing, sounding almost surprised, when he tilted his hips forward so that the base of his cock and his pelvis rubbed against her. She bit his ear, with an _mmph_ , and somehow, the pain felt good.

Kissing her, sloppily, one more time, Ben pushed up and braced himself on his outstretched arms. He sunk in a little deeper, with that, and groaned, softly, looking down at her, feeling deep-seated satisfaction that he’d made her come that fast.

With a happy, equally satisfied smile, Rey stretched her arms out above her head and looked hazily up at him. Offhandedly, she asked, “You had a vasectomy, didn’t you?”

“No.” He kept thrusting, lazily. The thought of impregnating her again, this time, on purpose, made the muscles of his lower abdomen twitch pleasantly. “I want another baby.”

Rey’s face suddenly changed from sleepy and sated to horrified. “Now?”

“Maybe.” Ben teased. The joke didn’t have the intended effect.

“Get off!” She was slapping and his chest and shoulders, ineffectually.

“What?” He pulled halfway out, and pouted. He’d been getting close, his balls tightening up and the base of his spine starting to tingle.

“Are you _trying_ to get me pregnant?” She pushed him the rest of the way off. “I thought you had a vasectomy.”

“Why would you think _that_?”

“You – you said you were going to!” Her face was very red, and not just from the exertion of sex.

He remembered the offhand comment, now. “That was just something I said. I wasn’t being serious. No – I _was_.” Ben corrected himself. “But I changed my mind. I don’t want our daughter to be an only child. And _I_ want another baby. Maybe a boy.” Rey was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You don’t want another one?”

“I – _maybe_.” Rey sputtered, red-faced. “I – I don’t want to be your – your _baby mama_.” Ben laughed at that word, and she seemed offended. “I want to fall in love and get _married_ and have children _on purpose_ and have a real family.” She looked almost upset now, and defensive. “I want _that_.”

At first, Ben felt a clench of panic, ugly jealousy, and resentment. His first thought was that she’d told him what she wanted, and told him that she didn’t want those things with _him_. But she was looking at him as if she thought he couldn’t give her what she wanted and as if that made her sad. He almost told her that he’d give her anything she wanted, but he didn’t. Instead, he told her, gently, “You deserve that.”  

Rey nodded, looking inexplicably disappointed. Hating to see her sad, Ben pulled her into his lap and kissed her. When she tried to squirm away, he gestured to his slightly-softened member. “You’re just going to leave me like this?” Rey narrowed her eyes at him, even as she wrapped her arm loosely around his neck and played with his hair. “I'll pull out.” He promised.

“I’ve heard that before." She told him, exasperated. 

“I promise." Ben kissed her mouth, and mumbled against it, referring to much more than the haphazard form of birth control, "I'll do it right this time."

Rey didn't answer, but she kissed him back. 

***

If their lovemaking had been cautious and straightforward before, it wasn’t now. Rey sat astride him, arms around his neck, holding on for dear life, as Ben gripped her hips less than gently, moving her up and down in tandem with his thrusts. Her breath came fast in his ear, and he felt her hardened nipples rubbing against his chest. As the friction increased, he felt the warm wetness of breastmilk trapped between them, leaking down their stomachs and making their skin make odd, slippery noises as they moved together.

Holding Rey’s ribcage in his hands, Ben leaned her back and hunched over her chest, kissing her messy breasts. Her hand tightened in his hair, but she didn’t stop him when he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked it. She moaned and quivered around him, her back arching in his hands, babbling nonsense as she came.

When Ben lifted his head, she wiped off his mouth with her thumb. He sucked the digit, too, and her dilated eyes grew very dark. He thought, for a fleeting moment, about breaking his promise and not pulling out. He was sure that he wanted more children, and he was sure he didn’t want them with anyone but her. Still, he roughly lifted her off his cock, one arm around her waist. She straddled his thighs and watched as he pumped himself, three times, his penis straining straight up, trapped in between their bodies.

Ben grunted, closing his eyes. When he opened them, white and white was splattered across her stomach, one fluid thin and milky, the other viscous and thick. With a shaky sigh, Ben crushed her to his chest, smearing the mess across his sweaty skin as it cooled. After a minute, Rey leaned back, her lips twitching as if she was trying not to smile. She looked down at herself, and then at him, and snorted.

Ben, for his part, kept an admirably straight face. “I think Hanna should sleep in her nursery every night.”

***

They showered off, stripped off the wet sheets, and laid on the bare mattress. Ben knew Hanna would be awake and demanding to be fed in an hour, so he didn’t sleep.

Laying in the dark, feeling Rey’s breath tickle his collarbone, Ben had an idea. He formed a plan. His plans were always grand, even recklessly so, and this one was no exception.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What does Ben have planned? HmmmMMMMMmmmm. 
> 
> P.S. There's been some discussion about Rey's characterization. I've had to be creative, because there isn't much canon material. That said, I've been dropping some hints, and in the next chapter, we will go much deeper into her motivations and desires. I hope you're excited about that! 
> 
> P.P.S. Happy Christmas, my friends! For the next week or so, I'll be enjoying time with my own family rather than writing, and I hope you will be, too.


	23. Chapter 23

The next week, Ben lured Hux from the office under the pretense of getting drinks at lunch. He had three drinks with lunch, to steel his nerves, and still didn’t know what to say. On the way back to the office, he just stopped short in front of Tiffany’s on Wall Street.

“What?” Hux turned around, looking mildly irritated. “I have a meeting in forty-fived minutes.”

“I need your advice.” Ben rocked back and forth on his heels, in front of the window display.

“Diamond studs. Half carat. Rey isn’t flashy. Anything bigger and she won’t wear them.” Hux told him, without hesitating.

Ben didn’t respond for a second, unsure of how to break the news, and his friend’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m not looking for earrings, Hux.” Hux’s jaw unhinged completely. When the redhead didn’t say anything, Ben elaborated, “I’m going to tell Rey that I love her, and then I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

Hux suddenly looked horrified. “You haven’t told her you _love_ her?”

“No.”

“And she hasn’t –”

“No.” Ben suddenly was very defensive. “But she wants to get married.” He purposefully omitted the fact that she hadn’t specified she wanted to marry _him_.

“She told you that?”

“Yes.” Ben held his ground. “She said she wants to get married one day and have more kids and do the whole… old-fashioned thing.”

“In _retrospect_ ,” Hux put heavy emphasis on the word. He looked skeptical, but somehow amused. The shock had faded from his face. “When she said that she wanted to get married _one day_ , wouldn’t that have been a good time to, you know, profess your undying love and make your intentions known?”

Ben floundered for a second. “Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise.”

“Does Rey even _like_ surprises?”

Ben struggled to admit the truth. “She hates surprises.”

“Christ, Ben.” Hux groaned, covering his face with his hand. “You can’t just – just _pop the question_ out of the blue. You have to have the _talk_.”

“It _has_ to be a surprise.” Ben told him, vehemently. “If it isn’t she’ll think I’m just marrying her for – I don’t know, for Hanna’s sake, or because it’s convenient, or because it’s the right thing to do. She won’t know that I _want_ to marry her.” Hux’s face softened. “I have to buy a ring and get on one knee and surprise her.”  

Hux thrust his hands into his pockets, looking him up and down. Ben squirmed, uncomfortable under his friend’s assessing stare. After a long, torturous moment, Hux started laughing.

“God _damn_.”

“What?”

Hux just shook his head, grinning.

***

Han whistled when he saw the ring. His graying, thin face didn’t even register surprise. “Took you long enough.”

Ben tucked the ring back into its tiny velvet box, and back into his pocket, embarrassed. It had only taken him ten minutes to choose it – he’d been able to rule out anything intricate, knowing she wouldn’t wear that when she was painting or sculpting. The simplest diamond solitaire was what she’d like, he known, instinctively. He’d been holding onto it for almost two weeks, unable to muster the courage to propose, or to find the words to use when he did. “I’ve been carrying it around for a few days.”

“You’re supposed to _give it_ to her, you know.”

Ben glanced out the window at the courtyard. Hanna and Rey were outside, waiting for them. He’d come in to wheel Han out to see them, not wanting his three-month old exposed to the sickly-seeming hallways of the palliative care center. Outside, on a blanket in the clean, fresh air, Hanna was sprawled on her back, and Rey leaned over her, making silly faces.

Maybe he’d give her the ring tonight.

***

As he pushed his father’s wheelchair down the halls, Ben asked the usual question. He wondered if the diamond ring in his pocket would change the answer. Part of him hoped it did. He’d shown it to him, hoping it would. “Did you change your mind about starting chemo?”

“No.”

“Why?” When his father didn’t answer, he pulled the wheelchair a stop, abruptly, in the front of the elevator. He circled it to face Han and punched the elevator button angrily. “I’m going to get married. Don’t you want to be there?” When his father didn’t say anything, he slammed the button again, over and over. “What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for me to forgive you?”

“Ben.” The elevator opened and closed again behind Ben; he ignored it.

“Fine, I forgive you. Okay? Are you – are you fucking _happy_ now?”  

Han looked at his feet on the metal pedals of the wheelchair, his mouth twisting and working silently. Finally, he asked, in a low, gravelly voice, “Do you mean that?”

Ben open and closed his mouth, twice. Having his own child had changed something that had been long hardened in his heart. He was a father now, and the grudges and heartbreak of his youth seemed farther away, and unimportant. That, and he loved Hanna more than anything. Above all, he feared disappointing her or failing her as a father. In his heart of hearts, he knew he _would_ one day. It would kill him if, when that day came, she wouldn’t forgive him.

He didn’t forgive his father. Not quite. He didn’t think Han loved him the unselfish way he loved Hanna. But he knew, in his father’s place, he would want forgiveness. “Yes.”

“That’s what I was waiting for.”

“So you’ll do chemo.” Ben crossed his arms over his chest, blocking the way to the elevator.

“It’s too late for chemo.” Han tried to roll his own wheels, futilely. They faced each other, Ben very tall and young, and Han bent in his chair, and old.

“Why were you _waiting_ , then?” Ben knew the answer, as soon as he asked. His forgiveness was a parting gift, not an olive branch. For the first time, looking at Han – in the wheelchair, small and discolored – Ben accepted the reality that his father was going to die. His throat constricted, painfully, and suddenly, his eyes burned. “Dad.”

“I want to go sit in the sun and see my granddaughter.” Han sounded very tired, but content. He didn’t say anything about the tears in his son’s eyes.

***

Out in the courtyard, Rey kissed Han’s temple and put Hanna in his arms. The baby squirmed happily, her dark eyes focused on her grandfather. She played with the hem of his sweater, happily. Babies don’t understand death, and she was blissfully happy, unware that he smelled like dying and his hands trembled.

Ben’s red eyes didn’t go unnoticed. Rey saw them, and chewed her lip, but she didn’t say anything. He almost flinched when she wrapped her arm around his waist and pressed a kiss onto his shoulder blade, through his shirt.

***

Rey left her job interview with a smile on her face. She danced with excitement on the subway, skipped down the street, and burst into the house. She was too happy to worry whether the baby was sleeping. She’d left her with Leia, but it was dark, almost eight, and Ben should be home by now. She caught herself – _home_ – but she didn’t bother correcting herself. It felt like he lived with them. Maybe he _should._ “Ben!”

Ben stirred on the couch, brow creasing. He was fast asleep, Hanna on his chest. His large hands were folded over her back, keeping her secure on his sternum. Both of their mouths were hanging open, and her heart skipped a beat at how _alike_ they looked. If she and Ben had remained at odds, or had even just become begrudging co-parents, she would have had to be reminded every day of him. The resemblance made her smile, now.  

She remembered Ben’s demand, during the early weeks of her pregnancy – that they spend time together, as a family, every week. She’d been utterly resistant to that idea, but he had insisted, because it was what was best for Hanna. Rey tip-toed around the couch and sat on the arm of it, near Ben’s head. This _was_ what was best for Hanna – the three of them, together.

It was a bittersweet revelation, because _this_ wasn’t what was best for _her_. Ben, in his own words, never wanted to get married. She wanted to get married, to have the white dress and the cake. She could have that, a husband and two-point-five children, but she’d have to give up the only family she’d ever known to have it.  

Rey couldn’t give this little family up, she knew, looking at them.

She studied how Ben’s large, rough hands cupped the baby’s entire body, protectively, even in his sleep. She knew how safe those hands could make her feel, when the baby was in her crib and they were in bed together. They could make her feel other things, but mostly _safe._

Admired the matching heads of dark hair, Rey ran her hand first over Hanna’s sparse mane, and then over Ben’s thick one. The latter stirred, eyelids flickering. When his eyes opened, his gaze was unfocused.

“Hi.” She breathed, as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

His eyes closed again. “Hi.” He adjusted Hanna on his chest, tucking her under his chin so he could nuzzle the top of her head.

“I got a second interview.” She told him, wondering if he was asleep again.

“That’s great.” His lashes parted again, and he studied her, upside down. “Where?”

“The Frick.” She played with an errant curl of his hair. “Acquisitions and curation assistant.”

“When’s the second interview?”

“Next week.”

“My mother will be thrilled.” His lips twitched. “Getting to keep Hanna more often.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’ll get the job.” Rey reproached him, her hand drifting to the side of his face.

“You will.” He leaned into her palm with a low, gusty sigh.

“How was your day?” She felt like they were enacting a scene, one in which a happily married couple regroups at the end of the day. A longing tugged low in her stomach – they were just _playing_ , after all.

“Long day.” He shifted on the couch. “End of quarter reports due tomorrow.” He’d left the brownstone at five in the morning, grumbling softly in the darkness while he dressed. “And then the board of directors votes on whether I stay or go.” He added, seemingly as an afterthought – although Rey knew better than to think it was an afterthought – “I got a call from the hospice today. It might be this week.”

Rey’s gut twisted. She didn’t know what to say, so she leaned forward and kissed his brow. Against it, she whispered, wincing at how shallow the comforting gesture seemed, “Do you want some dinner? I’ll make whatever you want.”

A hand snaked up and wrapped around the nape of her neck, and Ben craned forward. The upside-down kiss was ungainly, but needy. When it broke, Rey stared at his glistening mouth. Numbly, she repeated, “What do you want?”

“I want you.”

***

Rey put Hanna in her little swing, its motorized hum the only sound in the apartment as she made her way back to him. Ben watched her come, sitting on the couch with his legs splayed out in front of him. His eyes were very dark. It occurred to her that he’d never seen her in professional clothes. The pencil skirt and blouse felt funny after months of oversized t-shirts and maternity clothes.

She walked in between his legs, and bent at the waist to kiss him. Her knees wavered, first with the intensity of the kiss, and then, with purpose. She eased onto them, slowly, reaching for his belt buckle.

“Don’t.” Ben’s hand covered hers on the buckle, stopping her.

“What?”

“I don’t…” His throat bobbed, and suddenly, he looked inexplicably ashamed. “I don’t want you on your knees. It reminds me of a different time in my life. When this kind of thing was meaningless.”

Rey sat back on her heels, and studied him. He had circles under his eyes, and they were red-rimmed. He’d taken the late-night feeding for three nights in a row and then worked fourteen-hour days. Her independence aside, she felt a rush of gratitude, knowing that he _provided_ for her, both practically and emotionally.

“You mean so much to me.” Rey leaned forward and pressed her forehead against his. “Let me take care of you.” She felt him tremble, and when she kissed him again, he sighed _yes_ into her mouth.

“Just… not on your knees.” He pleaded, cupping her face.

Rey put her hands on top of his, like parenthesis. “Then take me to bed.”

***

On their bed – she caught herself, _again_ – Rey shimmied down Ben’s body, kissing his belly through his shirt. He reared up and stripped it off, and she covered his chest with kisses, pushing him back onto the flat of his back. He let her take care of his pants and underwear, and take him into her mouth. She breathed deeply, eyes watering, and he nervously patted the back of her head. He was trying not to choke her, keeping control of himself even in this. She wanted to see that control snap.

It did, when she withdrew to a more manageable mouthful and hollowed her cheeks out. His hand tightened in her hair, and a low hiss reverberated in his chest. A few circles of her tongue around the head of his cock had his splayed thighs trembling under her.

Rey found it oddly satisfying to take care of him, to take his mind off everything and scramble his wits, but Ben retained some level of control. He rolled over and into her, burying his face in her neck.

It was comforting, steady sex – not slow, exactly, or gentle. His pace was reassuring and every thrust was solid, as if he was trying to prove something to himself, or to her. He didn’t make any noises, but his breath escaped in soft, almost pained grunts.

Rey smoothed her hands up his braced arms, rubbing them soothingly. If this was what he needed, she’d let him have it. When he dipped his head down to kiss her, though, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tightly, trying to convey the depths of her feelings without speaking.

He didn’t try to do it without speaking. He mumbled something against her neck. She only caught part of it, but her heart leapt.

“What?”

“I love you.” He repeated, brokenly, ducking his head to watch himself pumping in and out, or to avoid her eyes.

Something funny bubbled up in Rey’s belly – not an orgasm, but a physical manifestation of intense emotion. She blinked rapidly, realizing something astonishing as the feeling rose up her ribs and into her throat. It burned her chest.

She was going to say it back. She hadn’t decided to say it, or even thought about whether to say it. She just knew she was going to say it.

Hanna’s ear-splitting screams reverberated through the apartment.

“Fuck!” Ben had been trying to keep quiet; in a rush of frustration, he yelled an obscenity. Still thrusting, though half-heartedly, he panted, “Is this a good time to try the cry-it-out method?”

Rey groaned, the moment totally ruined. “No.”

“Fuck.” Ben repeated. He pulled out and pressed a dry kiss onto her cheek. “I’ll feed her real quick. Stay here. _Just_ like this.”

Rey nodded, dizzily. Ben fumbled around the room, swearing, looking for his underwear. In the door-frame he half turned. She didn’t care if he saw her smiling, silly.

He loved _her._

“I’m sorry.” He told her, somewhat contritely.

“For what?”

“It wasn’t supposed to just come out like that.” He looked puppyish, running his hand through his mussed hair. “What I said.”

“Right.” Rey’s heart sunk, and with it, she sunk deeper into the pillows and mattress. “It’s okay.”

He nodded, affirmatively, and then reiterated, “Stay right there.”

Rey nodded, faintly, and when he was gone, she stared at the ceiling with a nagging sense of disappointement. Maybe he'd meant what he said, in the throes of lovemaking. Maybe he hadn't. But he regretted saying it, for some reason, and that stuck with her. She had the feeling it would for a while.

She’d be there, when Hanna fell asleep and he came back. She’d be _here_ , wanting something Ben couldn't give her, she realized, with a sick feeling, forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some angst before your happy (happyish?) ending, ya filthy animals. 
> 
> P.S. Of course Ben is an idiot. BECAUSE OF COURSE HE IS. 
> 
> P.P.S. In honor of the General, Leia will feature quite heavily in the next chapter. I think it's important that her spirit - fiesty, uncompromising, and nevr apologetic - live on in the fandom.


	24. Chapter 24

“How about this one?” The rectangle of grass that Leia Organa gestured to looked just like every other empty plot in the cemetery. 

Ben looked at it, and the two empty plots next to it. “Yes. This particular patch of dirt is better than the rest.”

“Benjamin.” His mother admonished.

“It’s fine.” He thrust his hands into his pockets, and looked up at the sky. It looked like it might rain. He wondered what would happen if it rained on the day of the funeral. Would it be too muddy to the coffin? Would the grave fill up with murky rainwater?

Rather than keep walking through the Brooklyn cemetery, pushing Hanna’s stroller through the damp grass, they stood at the plot. Leia was talking, but Ben barely heard her.

“… it’s a bit more expensive because it’s up on the hill, with the view.”

“It’s fine.” Ben repeated. He looked at said view, and then asked her, “Why does the fucking view matter?”

Leia exhaled heavily, and looked down at the baby in the stroller. Hanna looked up at her, wide-eyed. “You might want to bring Hanna here, sometimes.”

Ben shrugged, and toed the dirt. It was surreal, to pick out a plot. He felt morbid, slightly dirty, for doing it. Han wasn’t dead, yet. But he would be, soon. Soon, he’d need the gravesite, and the headstone they’d picked out that morning, and the coffin, and the flowers. Funerals were full of so many details, all of them meaningless.

“It will be a nice funeral.” Leia said, suddenly, as if she could read his mind.

“That’s a funny thing to say.”

“It’s nice of you to do this for him.” Leia turned her luminous, dark brown eyes on him – eyes Hanna had inherited.

Ben leaned down and made a fuss of adjusting the straps across Hanna’s chest, smoothing her pink onesie down underneath it, to avoid addressing his mother. Hanna looked at him very seriously, as if she understood the solemn nature of the occasion.

They ambled down the hill from the gravesite and walked between the rows of headstones together, in companionable silence. Ben watched Hanna as they walked.

“I’m sorry you have to do this.” His mother told him. “You’re too young. You should be planning a wedding, not a funeral.”

“I’ll leave that to Rey.” Ben stopped in front of a particularly impressive monument and examined it.

“What?”

“I’m going to propose.” He read the memorialization on the monument – _beloved husband and father._ It occurred to him he hadn’t picked an inscription for Han’s headstone. _Ex-husband and sometimes-father?_

“ _What_?” Leia’s voice rose in pitch when she repeated the word.

“I thought you’d be happy.” Ben looked at her, finally. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Is it what _you_ want?”

“Yes.” There was no hesitation. Ben wasn’t terribly sentimental about the idea of marriage, but he had – bizarrely – no reservations. Leia’s face softened, then, and spread into a smile.

“Does she know?”

“No.”

“A woman _always_ knows, Ben.”

“She doesn’t. I don’t think.” Ben paused. “I told her I loved her the other night. But it was an accident. It wasn’t very romantic.”

“An accident?” Leia sounded deeply skeptical.

“It just kind of came out in…” He cleared his throat. “In the moment.”

His ears must have gone pink, betraying him, because suddenly Leia rolled her eyes, laughing despite herself. It was contagious, and Ben found himself laughing, awkwardly. They stood there for a second, both a little embarrassed, and then Leia broke the uncomfortable silence.  “Romance is overrated, Ben. She doesn’t want romance. She wants love. There’s a difference.”

Ben scoffed. “What’s the difference?”

“Love is knowing where you stand.” Leia looked a little sad, then. “Life’s too short, Ben.” She patted his back. “Tell her again.”

“I’m just waiting for the right moment.” Ben looked back, at the gravesite. _Waiting_ seemed to be all her was doing, right now.

“There’s no such thing.” Leia looped her arm through his, and they walked out of the cemetery, each resting one hand on the handle of Hanna’s pram. “There’s only the right person.”  

When they were at the car, Ben suddenly stopped. “Was Dad the right person?”

“Yes.” Leia didn’t hesitate when she said that word, either. Ben watched her lift Hanna out of her buggy and strap her into the carseat.

“Why couldn’t you make it work?” He couldn’t help the hostility in his voice, and he wondered, for the first time, whether he also blamed his mother, and not just his father, for their divorce.

“I don’t know.” Leia looked wistful when she turned around. “But he was the one. There was never anyone else, for me.”

***

Ben took his mother to the hospice after they’d left the cemetery. They had planned to go there together to tell Han about the funeral arrangements. Han would roll his eyes and mutter something about hating parties, and then ask that they serve hard liquor, Ben knew.

“I think you should go in without me.” He told her, stopping in front of the palliative care center. It had started to rain in earnest.

“Why?”

Ben kept the engine of the car turned on. “Tell him what you told me.”

“Ben.” Leia looked exasperated, and somehow, simultaneously, as if she might cry. “That was a long time ago.”

“Life’s short.” He told her, simply, echoing her own words.

***

Ben walked into the brownstone slowly and heavily, holding Hanna against his chest. Rey heard him from in the kitchen, where she was burning the bottom of her pot of spaghetti sauce – his thudding footsteps and gusty sighs, and the sound of the rain blowing in when he opened the door.

“Ben?”

He didn’t answer, but he moved slowly into the kitchen, as if he was exhausted. He was drenched, Hanna tucked inside his jacket, against his chest. Rey leaned in and kissed Hanna’s cheek, standing very near to him. When she straightened up, she didn’t move away. She wanted him to kiss her temple, or her forehead, or her hair. She could visualize it. He was standing so close.

But he was distracted. “I got all the details taken care of.”

“That’s good.” Rey stepped back.  

“He doesn’t even want a funeral.” Ben didn’t seem to have heard her. “It’s really more for my mother.”

“How is she holding up?” His eyes flickered to hers, at last.

“She’s with him, now.” Ben let her take Hanna out of his arms. He had the same slightly lost look that he always did when she was taken away from him. Rey pressed her daughter’s face against her collarbone, feeling, for her part, _less_ lost now that she was holding her. Hanna was warm and reassuring against her chest. Her breathing was even and deep, and even if her hair had gotten a little damp, she was still asleep.

Hanna grumbled a little as Rey tucked her into her swing, her brow creasing up in a way that reminded her of Ben.

“Rey.”

She looked up, her hand still smoothing droplets of water out of Hanna’s downy brown hair, soothing her back to sleep. She should get back to stirring the spaghetti, it really _was_ burning, but she didn’t want to stop looking at Hanna. “Yes?”

She expected Ben to ask what was burning, but he didn’t.

“My mom told me something today.” Ben shifted, running a hand over his wet hair. It was shaking. “Love is knowing where you stand." He laughed, softly, sounding almost as if he was in disbelief.  "I’m standing in the kitchen, soaking wet, you have – _spaghetti sauce_ on your shirt, and I think you burned dinner. But I know where I stand with you.” He wasn't laughing, anymore. He sunk to one knee, clumsily, and suddenly, he wasn’t standing anymore. “Marry me.”

Rey’s world tilted, abruptly. She felt almost sick to her stomach, as if this was a joke, or as if she was misunderstanding him completely. “What are you doing?”

“I’m proposing. We're a family. Be my wife.”

“You’re not serious.” He couldn’t be. That, or he was serious, but seriously misguided. He'd have to be, to propose to a woman he didn't love. Her chest tightened like it might implode. 

“I’m very serious.” Ben looked serious enough, that was even more terrifying. She couldn't find her voice to say _no_ , and his voice was steadier now. He stayed on one knee. “I love you.”

“You love me.” Her ears buzzed. It felt like all she could do was repeat his words, incredulously. “I don’t... I don't even know what to say.”

“Say yes.” Ben fumbled, suddenly, in his pockets, cursing. “I have a – fuck, where is it.” He pulled out a little box, and propped it open. The light caught on something inside the box. “I have a ring.”

Rey stared at it, confused, and then at his face. His jaw twitched, anxiously. An adrenaline-fueled, strangled laugh erupted from her chest, and seemed to startle him.

“I don’t care about _the ring_ , Ben.” She choked out the words through sobbing laughter, tasting salt. It wasn’t clear to her when she’d started crying, or even _why._

Ben must have thought she was about to reject him, because she couldn’t say anything else. But, when she didn’t say anything, and she just kept laughing, and crying, at the same time, the corners of his eyes crinkled a little. His shoulders slumped with relief. “I’ll kneel here all night if you want me to, but – ”

Rey crossed the room in two steps and bent double to press her mouth to his, laughing against his lips. His arms wrapped around her, swiftly, and as he stood, he took her off her feet, spinning her around and around in the kitchen.

***

The diamond on her finger caught the light from the night-light when she moved her hand across Ben’s chest in bed.

“That looks good on you.” His voice rumbled from deep within his chest. “You should wear it all the time, and nothing else.”

Rey smacked his chest, gently, looking down at him. His hair had dried funny; it was wilder than usual on the pillow behind his head.  His wet clothes were gone, too, pulled off of him somewhere between the kitchen and the bedroom. She’d been divested of her clothes, too, along the way.

Ben’s fingers crept up and across her thigh to the faded, silvery lines on her hip, tracing them, gently. He could see and touch the stretch marks and the soft scores across the bottom of her belly, even in the dim light. They’d never made love like this, perhaps for that reason. She was on top of him, her legs pinning his hips to the bed, and she should have felt powerful, and dominant.

Instead, she felt exquisitely vulnerable.

His fingers traced the shallow crease at the bottom of her abdomen across the width of her body, to the other hip, and touched the matching silvery lines there. She held her breath as he pulled the slight-loose skin tight and then let it go again. It should have offended or embarrassed her, to be studied so closely, but it didn’t.

Both hands crept higher, across the plane of her stomach, and ribs, to her breasts. He touched these like it was the first time he’d really seen them, too. His palms smoothed over and around the mounds of her breasts, barely touching them, and then slid under her arms and around her back.

Ben tugged her forward, over his chest, and kissed the place where her heart was. His erection prodded her hip, leaving a wet little mark and swelling urgently, but his mouth was utterly unhurried. It trailed across her skin from her heartbeat, to the divot at the base of her throat, past the sensitive part of her neck right below her ear, and then to her mouth.

His hand snaked clumsily in between them, as they kissed, and collided with Rey’s. They’d both reached down, desperate to rearrange themselves. Ben chuckled against her mouth, wrapped his hand around hers, and around his cock. Her hips edged up, and he nudged inside. They sighed in tandem, and then slowly, torturously, Rey sat back up, sinking completely down onto him and bracing her hands on his chest. The diamond winked at her.

His fingers stayed at the apex of her thighs, after he was sheathed inside, finding her clitoris and rubbing it with a purpose. Rey moved up and down, twice, and then stopped, realizing that when she did that, she couldn’t feel his fingers, his _wonderful_ fingers.

Rey should have felt self-conscious, tilting her head back, sitting perfectly still, and trembling around him. She didn’t. She just focused on feeling him inside of her, and feeling him touch her. As she came, he  started to rock up into her, unable to wait any longer, sending ripples up her spine and to the roots of her hair.

“The last time we did this...” She gasped for breath, feeling his hands settle onto her waist and their hips settle into a rhythm. “I was going to say it back.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice was throaty and low. “I should have just let it be, because I meant it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I wanted you to know I meant it.” His hands moved from her hips to her backside, gripping it and grinding her down. “That it wasn't just something I said because we were making love. Also, I’m an idiot.”

She laughed, breathlessly, and leaned down into him, kissing him to tell him she forgave him. His arms crushed her, and they were rolling, tumbling over each other and off the bed. They hit the floor, hard, Rey atop Ben.

“Ben –” Startled, and worried that he’d hit his head a little too hard – then again, this was already surreal, so how would she be able to tell? – Rey tried to climb off of him.

“No, don’t stop.” He rasped, slamming her hips back down, hitching her leg up and easing her onto her back. The floor was hard, and he thrust hard into her, kissing her desperately.  

“So you don’t want me to say it while we’re making love?” Rey asked, breathlessly, tilting her hips up, and digging her fingers into the skin of his lower back. She already knew the answer.

Ben throbbed inside her, face screwing up into a grimace of pleasure for a second. His shoulders and arms tensed with the effort of not peaking until she said those three words. “I want you to say it.” His voice was strangled. “Please.”

Rey put her hands on his face, and held it. He opened his eyes. They were very bright in the dim room. “I love you.”

Ben’s eyes closed again, and the tension left his body all at once, with a soft, guttural noise and rush of heat into her belly. He sank down on top of her, breathing heavily, and echoed the words back to her in a voice that made her eyes prick again.

After all that time, and all the resistance she'd put up, it had been so easy to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's to a new year full of new beginnings. 
> 
> P.S. Mom always knows best. Always.


	25. Chapter 25

Hanna slept through the night for the first time, that night. Ben didn’t. He woke up at three o’clock, like he always did, expecting to hear a scream through the baby monitor. It was very quiet.

Rey shifted, with a little noise, next to him. She wound her fists deeper into the overly long cuffs of his shirt and went back to sleep.

They’d eaten plain spaghetti – the sauce was burned beyond all recognition – for dinner, in bed. In another reality, Ben’s first instinct would have been to make reservations at a swanky restaurant in midtown, or to call the manager and get a table even though they didn’t have reservations. He would have ordered champagne, or at least expensive wine, and steak, to celebrate. His plans would have been a far cry from plain spaghetti in bed, sneaking grins at each other through mouthfuls of pasta, hap-hazardly dressed in whatever was lying around on the floor.

Then again, all of his plans for proposing had gone awry, too. He’d toyed with various ideas – the above-mentioned fancy restaurant plan was one of them – and none of them had seemed right. Somehow, the kitchen, on a Tuesday, had seemed right.

He tugged Rey into his side and waited for Hanna to wake up. She didn’t, and eventually, he fell back asleep.

***

When Hanna finally made herself known via the baby monitor, it was that greenish hour before dawn. Ben plodded, yawning, into her nursery, in his boxers. He fed her a bottle, in their usual chair, in the corner of the living room, and then, when she started to yawn, decided he was still sleepy, too.

Laying her down in the middle of their mattress, Ben got back under the covers and rested his hand on her full little belly. His palm covered it, entirely. He could feel her breathe, deeply and slowly, and her head lolled to one side. She was fighting to stay awake as she watched him, the long lashes over her brown eyes fluttering.

As the light peeked through the blinds, Rey’s arm curled around Hanna’s chest, just above his hand. “Good morning.”

Hanna turned her head towards her mother’s voice. “Did you see that?”

Rey’s eyes were still closed. “See what?”

“She just turned her head to look at you.” Ben rubbed his thumb along his daughter’s tiny ribcage. “She’s going to be able to hold it up on her own soon.”

Rey leaned forward and pressed her nose to Hanna’s, opening her eyes. “If Daddy’s not more careful, he’s going to give you a sister or brother.”

“Daddy got carried away.” Ben echoed her tone of voice, the slightly higher-pitched and comforting one she used when she talked to Hanna but _really_ meant for him to listen. His voice dropped, and then he was just talking to her, with a teasing grin. “He’d never had sex with his fiancée before.”

Rey tucked her face into the pillow, embarrassed, but not before he saw her turn pink. He wondered, absurdly, whether she’d forgotten what had happened, or whether she’d thought it was just a dream. When she looked up from the pillow, though, she was smiling, a bit shyly. “ _Fiancée_. That’s a strange word.”

“It’s French.”

Rey rolled her eyes. “Don’t patronize. I mean it just sounds so… trivial. We have a _child_ together.”

His hand crept over Hanna’s stomach to hers. He rubbed a little circle onto it through his shirt, and said, cautiously, “You know, now that we’re… _affianced_ …” Rey snorted with laughter at that word. “We could have _another_ child together.”

Rey’s mouth quirked, and she rolled onto her back. When she laid on her back, her belly still seemed as flat at it had been before Hanna. “You’re only saying that because she slept through the night.”

“No, I’m not.” His hand moved from her hip, to the underside of her breasts, as if it couldn’t decide whether to slip in her underwear or under the starchy fabric of his button-up. As he moved his hand, he remembered how her stomach had felt, full and stretched at nine months pregnant. “I don’t care if we never sleep again.” He glanced down at Hanna. She’d fallen asleep, a string of drool hanging from her tiny, pink lips. “We could try making another one just like this, right now.”

Rey’s mouthed pursued for a second, as if she was considering it. His heart reacted to that in a way he hadn’t expected; he’d been half-joking, but when she hesitated, he desperately wanted her to agree. When she spoke, she sounded almost nervous, as if she wasn’t sure what his reaction would be when she brought up the _m-word_. “We can try _after_ we get married.”

Ben propped himself up on his elbow and gave a deep, theatrical sigh. “When can we get married?”

A funny look crossed her face, as if she’d realized something. “We could get married right now.”

***

They almost tripped on their way up the courthouse steps, holding hands and grinning like idiots. They’d taken Hanna to Leia’s apartment – without telling her where they were going, for fear she’d throw a fit and insist on a church wedding. The building didn’t open for another thirty minutes, but they were determined to be the first in line. She wasn’t wearing white – more of a pale pink, just something she’d had in her closet – and his suit was a little wrinkled from laying the floor for two days.

“Are you sure?” Ben was out of breath when they reached the top of the steps. His grip on her hand was very tight. “You don’t want a white dress and a big cake and – _mmph_.” She kissed him to cut him off.

“I don’t need a wedding.” She squeezed his hand.

Ben’s eyes went soft. “I love you.” His cell phone started ringing. Out of reflex, he let go of her hand and pulled it out and started to silence it. His finger stilled over the button. “It’s… it’s the hospice.”

Rey felt her heart sink. It wasn’t quite eight in the morning. She knew the hospice staff wouldn’t call for any routine reason before eight in the morning. Judging from the look on Ben’s face, he knew that too. He stared at the phone, throat bobbing. His voice cracked painfully when he said, without any touch of humor, “My father has the worst fucking timing.”

“Are you going to answer?”

“I don’t want to.” Ben closed his shaking hand around the phone, lowering it towards his pocket and gripping it so tightly she thought he might break it. “Let’s go get married. Please.”

“Ben.” She thought about telling him that he _had_ to answer the phone, but she knew she didn’t need to.

He looked at her like a wounded animal, waiting for the last, merciful blow but still somehow dreading it. “You know what this is.”

Rey closed her hand around his on the phone. “Do you want me to answer it?”

He took a deep breath, steeling himself. The force of his inhale lifted his shoulders, and then his chest collapsed in on itself. “No, I can do it.”

***

When Leia opened the door, it was clear she’d gotten the call, too. She was drawn and pale, but she was more composed than Ben had been when he’d hailed a taxi on the steps of City Hall.

Rey couldn’t think of anything to say. She wasn’t much for hugging, or touching, really, but all she could think to do was put her arms around the woman who would be her mother in law. Leia’s arms were warm and maternal. To Rey, hugging her was as comforting as it was meant to comfort.

Leia caught her hand and held it, when she pulled away. She examined her ring finger, and the jewel on it.  Rey froze. This wasn’t the right time to tell her – or to be happy, at _all_. It felt wrong. She should have taken the engagement ring off. “I’m sorry. We were going to tell you – ”

“I already knew.” Leia suddenly looked down at her pale pink sundress, and heeled shoes, and her brown eyes narrowed. “Wait. Were you going to elope?”

Rey felt her cheeks flush. “I – I didn’t want to wait. We were just going to go to courthouse.”

Leia exhaled slowly, and for a moment, Rey thought she was angry. Then, she cracked a small, sad smile. She looked up, and said, as if she was addressing someone in the sky, “Thank you for stopping our idiot son from getting married without me there.”

Rey laughed, despite herself. “It wasn’t your idiot son’s idea. It was mine.”

A gleam came into Leia’s eye. “Are you…”

“ _No_.” Rey instinctively flattened her hands over her belly. Maybe, she thought, she should tell Leia that she _might_ be. She should tell her they were going to try again. Surely, they’d be forgiven if she knew that. “Not yet.”

Leia’s face bloomed into a smile, and then suddenly set into a fierce scowl. “After the wedding.”

“Yes.” Rey grinned, a little cowed.

“Which I _will_ be invited to.”

“Yes.” Rey stopped short. “It’s odd to be laughing at a time like this.”

Leia shrugged helplessly. “Well, you have to.”

***

When Ben got to the hospice, Han’s room was already empty. He’d died in his sleep, the administrator told him, in the hallway – as if that was supposed to make him feel better.

Ben stood at the foot of the bed for a long moment, looking at it. It was stripped already, just a bare mattress. It still smelled slightly of his father in the room. He was ostensibly here to settle the bill and collect his father’s things. There wasn’t very much left in the room – a photo of Hanna, framed. Some clothes, drab and wrinkled. A few books. A bible, to his surprise. Perhaps the hospice had provided it.

This was all that was left of his father. It was a weighted realization. Nothing of _Ben_ was here. Ben’s chest tightened horribly. This couldn’t be all that was left of a person when he was gone. This couldn’t be all that was left of a _father_ – no trace of his son.

The administrator had left a parcel on the side table – unopened, and post-marked from upstate. Ben looked at the return address, sitting heavily on the bare mattress. _Fishkill Correctional Facility_.

His fingers scrabbled at the tape on the box, all of the sudden. The box was almost featherlight. He almost wondered if it was empty, in a cruel prank.

The box was full of paper. At first, it looked like trash. None of it – photographs, scraps of newspaper and magazines, letters, post-cards, Christmas cards, printed-out web pages – was organized. It was all thrown carelessly into the box. Each item had multiple pieces of errant pieces of tape attached to it. This had all been taped up on the wall in his jail cell, Ben realized. It was being returned to Han by the wardens, a day too late.

Fingers clumsy with nerves, he plucked out a piece of paper. It was a photograph of him, at nine years old. He remembered that year. His father was in jail for the second time, that year. The divorce had been finalized. He wondered if his mother had sent that photograph.

Next, an article, from the Wall Street Journal. It had been just a blurb, really, when he’d been a rising star, only twenty-seven years old. It had been painstakingly clipped out and taped up. Ben read it, quickly. He barely recognized the man who’d been briefly interviewed – it had been his first interview. He sounded like an asshole, or at least, that was what Rey would say.

His high school graduation announcement. Valedictorian. A paparazzi photograph of him at a charity gala with some blonde he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember on his arm. Christmas cards he’d begrudgingly signed at Leia’s behest. The occasional letters he’d been forced to write as a child. That time his high school baseball team had made it to the state finals – he’d been the pitcher. An award he’d won in business school. Hanna’s ultrasound, the one he’d given Han.

By the time he’d emptied the box, he’d had a retrospective of his whole life.

***

“He loved you.” Rey stroked his face, with her open palm, after she saw the contents of the post box.

“He didn’t know me.” Ben closed his eyes, briefly. “How can you know someone through – through pictures, and newspaper articles?”

“He was trying to experience your life in the only way he could.” Rey went back to their coffee table and knelt, sifting through all of Han’s worldly possessions again. She smoothed her fingers over the spine of the bible. “I didn’t know your father was religious.”

“He wasn’t.” Ben told her, absently. “That wasn’t his.”

“There’s a letter in here.” She brandished a folded piece of paper.

Ben took it from her, wondering whether he was about to disappointed. Surely the letter, like the bible, belonged to someone else. That, or it was something mundane, like a shopping list.  

This letter wasn’t a treasured memento, like the letters Han had hoarded over the years. It was on fresh paper, and it was in Han’s very wobbly handwriting. It was addressed to him.

Ben started to read the last letter, pacing around the room. Rey watched him, arms folded across her chest, nibbling her thumb. She was perhaps expecting him to cry, or run his hands over his face wearily, which he’d been doing a lot that day.

Instead, after a few minutes, Ben threw back his head and started laughing out loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sobs* I'm sorry. 
> 
> P.S. I will publish one more chapter, and a brief epilogue, which I may be annexed to the last chapter, depending on its length.


	26. Chapter 26

The day of Han’s funeral dawned bright and clear. In movies, Rey reflected, it always rained on the day of a funeral. People stood around graves with black umbrellas and black suits on. In keeping with the weather, Rey didn’t wear black. She put on a black coat over her dress, though, despite the warm temperature.

Her brownstone was all in boxes as she left it. She had to rummage through one to find her shoes. Hanna’s toys were the only things still scattered around, because she wouldn’t tolerate their absence for even one day. They’d packed her things, been confronted with a tantrum, and immediately unpacked them.

“Ready?” Ben lingered at the door, fiddling with his keys the way he did when he was anxious. Hanna was drooling on the lapel of his suit, well-napped so that she wouldn’t throw a fit during the ceremony.

“I’m ready.”

***

Family and friends – what little family and friends there were – gathered at the stone church near the cemetery in Brooklyn, at three o’clock. Rey made the rounds through the pews with Hanna, letting everyone coo over the white bow on her head and her ruffled pink onesie. Her friends took turns holding the baby, each of them somewhat confused why they’d been invited to her fiancé’s father’s funeral, but gamely there and dressed in black.

Hanna tolerated and even basked in the attention for a few minutes, and then promptly began to cry, fat tears rolling down her face. It was a face, at almost four months, that was finally starting to have features, and to carry the slightest resemblances to her parents and grandparents.

“No crying, Hann.” Ben admonished, taking Hanna from Finn. “That comes later.” Rey looked at him, sharply, wondering whether he’d intended to abbreviate her name into those three letters, as a new nickname or a term of endearment, or whether he’d just been thinking of his father.

Hanna begrudgingly stopped crying in her father’s arms. She shoved her little fist into her mouth and was reduced to silent glowering while he bounced her against his chest. He gave Leia a nervous smile, and she answered with a reassuring one.

Secured the baby with one arm, Ben walked to the front of the chapel, and cleared his throat nervously. Rey sat on the front pew, next to Leia. Ben made eye contact with her briefly, smoothing his tie down with his free hand, and then said, awkwardly, “Thank you for coming, everyone. We, ah – we won’t be having a funeral today.”

A ripple of surprise ran through the church. Rey hid her smile. She felt Leia squeeze her knee, through her skirt, and knew, without looking, that Leia was smiling, too. Hanna was calm, now, resting her cheek on his chest, so Rey held her hands out, gesturing. Ben stepped over to her, and handed her their daughter.

Rey pressed the baby into her chest and rested her chin on her hair, feeling her pitter-pattering heart slow down as she fell asleep. Holding Hanna gave her something to do with her hands, so she didn’t feel so self-conscious. She suspected Ben had discovered the same thing. Now, he was running his hands through his hair, anxiously, at the front of the church.

Ben drew the letter from Han out of his breast pocket and held it up for everyone to see. It had been on fresh paper when he’d first read it. Over the past week, it had been wrinkled and folded and read so many times that it looked old. “I’ll let my father explain.”

He cleared his throat again, this time with emotion, and began to read. “I don’t want a funeral.” That got a few awkward laughs. “I hate funerals. Everybody hates funerals. I didn’t write a will, but this is what I want. I know you already paid for the wake. There will be flowers and booze, and food, and hopefully everyone you like will show up, and no one you don’t like. Have a party.”

He paused, and looked out at the small gathering – his friends, her friends, his father’s few friends, his mother. Rey held her breath as his gaze settled on her.

“Or better yet, since your mother insisted on this being in a church… have a wedding.”

***

Ben overheard a waiter whisper, bewildered, as he cleared away empty champagne glasses, “This is the liveliest wake I’ve ever seen.”

He grinned into his own champagne glass, and looked across the room at Rey. She was wearing white in a sea of black and gray, but she would have stood out to him, anyways. He’d never seen her smile so unreservedly.

“You need more champagne.” Hux pressed a fresh glass into his hand. “Since you _robbed_ me of the chance to plan your bachelor party –”

“This time last year, my whole _life_ had been a bachelor party.”

“True.” Hux conceded. “Girls. Booze. Cocaine.”

“ _Once_.”

“Miss it at all?”

“No.” Ben looked back at Rey. She looked beautiful in white, he decided. He was glad, in retrospect, that he hadn’t gotten the chance to marry her in the courthouse, in pink. “I’m fully domesticated. I have a _wife_ – ” that word was still exhilarating to say,“ – and a baby. Speaking of Hanna, where is she?”

“Phas has her.”

“Careful, my kid is really fucking cute.” Ben deadpanned. “She might give Phasma baby fever.”

Hux shrugged, in a carefully crafted show of nonchalance. “We’ll probably get married before we have a baby.”

“No shit?” Ben almost spat out his champagne.

“Only, you know, we’ll probably do it in the Hamptons, not at a funeral.” Hux kept a straight face.

“Fuck off.” Ben laughed. Hux grinned good-spiritedly at him, and started to drift away. As he did, he added, over his shoulder,

“I don’t miss it, either.”

***

Finn looked into his drink when Rey approached him. She bit her lip, and fiddled with the stem of her champagne glass. She hadn’t had more than one or two drinks since Hanna’s birth, but tonight was a special occasion. That, and Hanna was starting to wean. She hadn’t expected to be disappointed that their breastfeeding phase was coming to an end, but she was. When she’d expressed that to Ben, he’d told her, wickedly, that he was disappointed, too. That had earned him a half-hearted slap on the shoulder, and then squeals of protest when he tried to rub his face into her breasts, mouthing at them through her shirt.

Still. Now she could drink more champagne. The champagne gave her the courage to breach a topic she’d felt hanging in the air between her and her friend for weeks, even months. “Finn, are we okay?”

“You don’t have to…” Finn faltered. “It’s your wedding day.”

“I do have to.”

Finn exhaled, heavily. “I mean, it’s okay. I knew you and I weren’t going to work out.” Rey felt the knot of guilt in her stomach untwist, just slightly. “…I just didn’t expect you to have a surprise wedding with your baby daddy at his father’s _funeral_.”

The tension dissipated with his joke, and they smiled at each other, tentatively. “We actually buried him yesterday, if that makes you feel better. Just the four of us. That’s what he would have wanted.”

“Great funeral.” Poe Dameron interrupted their conversation, bearing a plate laden with finger food. “Or wedding.” He popped a miniature quiche into his mouth. “I’d like you to know I take credit for introducing you and your _husband_.”  He caught Finn’s eye and winked. “I made the drink he bought her.”

“She wouldn’t let me buy her a drink, actually.” Ben materialized at her side, his arm draping possessively around her shoulder.

“Poe and I went to art school together.” Rey explained, to Finn, leaning unconsciously into Ben. “He was the bartender at the place where we…” She trailed off, suddenly embarrassed, and Ben started laughing, uproariously. “I was going to say _met_.” Rey reached for his champagne glass, flushing. “How much have you had to drink, Mr. Solo?”

“I’m celebrating, Mrs. Solo.” He held it out of her reach, and intercepted her with a kiss. “Come dance with me.”

***

Finn and Poe talked the rest of the night. Rey kept her eye on them, becoming increasingly pleased by that particular development. Mitaka was talking – more avidly than she had _ever_ seen him talk – to Dr. Kanata, and Lando, Han’s old friend, come out of the woodwork, was flirting shamelessly with Phasma.

Ben was dancing with his mother, talking quietly to her. Rey watched them, feeling something sad tug low in her stomach. She didn’t know who her father was. Han could have stood in for him, maybe. Now, she’d never have that moment, even by proxy.  

“You.” Hux swept over to her, and, all business, took Hanna out of her arms and put her into Phasma’s. He held out his hands. “Dance with me.”

“What?”

“You have to dance with me. I’m the best man. It’s tradition.”

“No, it’s not.” Rey protested, but she let him pull her onto the dance floor, twirling her dramatically.

He grinned at her. “It is now.”

***

It was nine o'clock when Ben slipped into the kitchen. He took a last look at Rey before he swung the metal door shut behind him. She was a little tipsy, and dancing with his mother. Her face was pink, and her hair was wispy around her face. 

The catering staff had left for the night. Alone in the industrial kitchen, he leaned back on a long metal table and pulled Han’s letter out of his pocket again. There were more paragraphs, ones he hadn’t read out loud, or even let Rey read.

***

_I needed your forgiveness, before I could go, but I never told you that I was sorry. I am sorry. I let you down, over and over. I wish I could say I know that now, but I knew it all along._

_I have been proud of you for your whole life. But I have never been as proud as I was to see you become a father._

_I won’t say goodbye. I’m just going away again. This time I hope you’ll miss me when I’m gone._

_Dad_

***

“Ben?”

Ben straightened, instinctively drawing the letter into his chest to hide it. “I’m back here.”

Rey shut the swinging door behind herself. “What are you doing in here?”

He held up the letter by way of explanation. Her face softened, and she crossed the room to wrap her arms around his waist. Resting his chin on the top of her head, Ben re-read the letter.

“Are you happy?” He asked her, after a second. He felt her move within the circle of his arms.

“Yes.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. She lifted her head. She was still pink-cheeked from dancing and champagne, but she looked very serious. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

Her lips twitched, fondly. “So why are you back here, all alone, on our wedding night?”

Ben looked down at her, trying to memorize the way she looked right at this _very minute_. “I was waiting for my beautiful wife to come find me.”

Rey swallowed hard, lashes fluttering. The color rose on her cheeks, and suddenly, she was looking intently at his lips. When Ben bent down to kiss her, she surged up on her tip-toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. He hadn’t been sure if they were brave, or stupid enough, to have quick, secretive sex in the kitchen at their wedding, and he would have been satisfied to just kiss and hold her, in a quiet moment away from the party.

But Rey only stopped kissing him to back up to the counter and push herself up on it, gathering her knee-length skirt around her thighs in bunches. Her legs dangled, and Ben realized she’d kicked off her shoes, at some point.

He stepped in between her legs and lifted the frothy, white layers of her skirt. She spread her thighs for him, and then wrapped them around him when he was close enough. Both of them tried to unzip his pants. One of them was successful, and he pushed through her fingers towards the wet cleft between her legs.

It was very hot in the kitchen. The slick, rhythmic sounds of intercourse somehow seemed very loud, or they did, until her panting and his grunts surpassed them. When Rey came, Ben wondered if anyone could hear them. He didn’t bother kissing her to keep her quiet, or putting his hand over her mouth. She didn’t bother trying to keep quiet or biting down on his shoulder.

Ben licked a bead of sweat off of Rey’s neck, gyrating his hips. He braced his hands on the edge of the counter and thrust harder. They’d be red and sweaty, when they were done with this, redder and more sweaty than dancing could have made them. Even if no one heard them, everyone would know. He didn’t care. She was his _wife_.

***

The room erupted into laughter and clapping when they slipped out of the kitchen, holding hands. It would have made for a small funeral, and it was an even smaller wedding, but their guests were raucous, whooping and cheering, and more than a little intoxicated.

“All right, all right.” Ben waved his hands, defeated but smiling. “Party’s over." 

A good-natured roar of protest erupted, peppered with rude jokes. Rey was beet-red, but she looked happy. She took Hanna from Leia, who was very tipsy, and trying not to laugh, and she hid her face against the baby’s scalp. She snuck him a grin, saying, sheepishly, "It's past her bedtime."

Their family and friends were still laughing at their expense. There were still had seven bottles of champagne, and it was only ten o'clock. Maybe all of the people they loved would keep drinking and reminiscing without them. He hoped they would, in a way. His father would have wanted the party to go on late into the night. As for himself, though, Ben knew it was time to take his family home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really sad writing this, but then I remembered... I'm writing an epilogue! So this isn't goodbye. 
> 
> P.S. Have some Stormpilot and Phux with your Reylo!


	27. EPILOGUE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a little epilogue, my friends!

Pregnancy test after pregnancy test came back negative. The first few Rey took, she took in secret. They hadn’t been trying, exactly, to get pregnant, for the first two months of their marriage. But they hadn’t been trying _not_ to, either, and Rey had assumed they would. They didn’t.

They’d started trying in earnest. Rey consulted with Dr. Kanata and started taking horrid folic acid supplements. Ben downloaded an embarrassing ovulation calendar, and didn’t seem to understand _why_ it was embarrassing. Whenever it sent them a notification Rey pretended to be sick or to have a doctor’s appointments. Ben didn’t bother making excuses. They’d come home for a long lunch and go back to their offices grinning and distracted, and hopeful.

Still, for the past five months, all the pregnancy tests had been negative.

Maybe this one would be different. This past month, their lunchtime tryst had turned into an all-afternoon affair. Hanna had been with her grandmother, as usual, and they’d spent the whole day naked. Trying to get pregnant was hard work, but that afternoon, it hadn’t _felt_ like work.

Rey held the test in her hand, squinting at it and tapping her foot. Ben rested his chin on her shoulder, winding his arms loosely around her waist. They were in the bathroom, and just outside the open door, _Sesame Street_ was on television. At nine months, Hanna wasn’t old enough to understand it, exactly, but she watched it starry-eyed, nonetheless. “A watched pot never boils.”

One line materialized on the test’s little screen and Rey groaned, shoulders slumping. “Apparently, my watched uterus doesn’t, either.” Ben laughed, softly, and pressed a kiss onto the side of her neck. She didn’t feel the sagging disappointment in his arms and solid chest, but she knew he must feel it. Part of her was grateful that he hid it. It took two, she knew, to make a baby, but she internalized her disappointment. If _he_ was disappointed in _her_ , too, it would be heartbreaking.

“We had sex _one_ time and got pregnant with Hanna.” Rey scowled at the minus sign on the test. “ _How_ did that _happen_?”

“We got lucky.” Ben tightened his grip around her waist, kissing the shell of her ear. When she signed, gustily, uncomforted even by those ministrations, he added, meaningfully, “Very, very lucky.”

Rey threw the negative test into the trash and sulked. “Maybe our luck has run out.”

Ben leaned back on the sink to look out into the living room. Hanna was on her belly on the blanket Finn and Poe had bought her for her baptism – they were _honorary_ godparents, in their own words – cooing at Elmo. They’d celebrated Christmas for the first time as a family here, in their new home, with a few boxes still unpacked and nothing hung on the walls. The Elmo obsession had started at Christmas, actually, with a book and doll from his mother. He gestured to Hanna and then looked back at Rey, with a crooked smile. “I still feel very lucky.”

***

Hux and Phasma got engaged a week later, and threw a party a week after that. Their engagement party was as sophisticated as they were, and too sophisticated for Rey. Ben could tell. She congratulated their friends warmly, happily answered their questions about Hanna, and then retreated into a corner where it wasn’t so crowded. She smiled blithely at anyone who passed her, nursing what looked like a gin and tonic. It was nearly empty, so he brought her another one, hoping a second drink would help her enjoy the party more.

“Oh.” She looked down at the drink he was holding out. “I’m not done with this one yet.”

Ben rolled his eyes and took the glass from her, downing the last bit of the drink in one swallow. It tasted bland – like tonic, ice, and lime. There was no alcohol in it. Something occurred to him, and he blurted out, “Is there –”

Rey cut him off, going pink. “Dr. Kanata thought it might help if I didn’t drink.”

“Oh.” Ben looked down at the fresh gin and tonic he’d brought her, vaguely disappointed by her explanation. “So there’s nothing you want to tell me?”

“Not right now.” Rey bit her lip, smiling. She smiled at him a little too long for him not to get suspicious, and then she looked past his shoulder, to where Phasma was talking about wedding venues and catering. “You know… “ She paused, and then told him, pointedly, “I’m pretty tired.”

“Oh.” Ben’s eyed widened. _That_ was what she was smiling about. It made him smile too. “Do you want to get out of here?”

***

Ben looked hopefully at Rey, as they shouldered on their jackets and walked out onto the curb to wait for a cab. “You haven’t started your period yet, have you?”

“ _Ben_.” Rey hissed, embarrassed, looking over her shoulder. “No.”

“What?” He looked unperturbed. “I was looking at the calendar today. I know the timing’s not right, but…” He tugged her hips towards his, wiggling his brows. “We could practice.”

“ _Your_ daughter -”

“Oh, she’s _my_ daughter when she misbehaves?” Ben laughed. He already knew what she was going to say – their nine-month-old had turned into a hellion, at some point between learning to babble non-words and trying to stand up (and failing miserably).

“ – refused to nap, had a blowout, and then threw _avocado_ at me. I’m tired.”

“Okay, okay, you’re tired.” Ben paused, and then asked, innocently, “…Too tired to practice?”

“Ben!”

He just grinned unrepentantly, hailing a cab and looping the other arm around her shoulders. It slowed their progress down the sidewalk towards the yellow vehicle, but Rey didn’t mind. She wrapped her arm around his stomach and didn’t let go.

***

“I took another pregnancy test today.” Rey said, offhandedly from their bathroom. She came into the bedroom, a moment later, wearing his old t-shirt and nothing else, her face scrubbed clean. When he didn’t comment, she cocked one hip, and put a hand on it.

“You know, you don’t have to put so much pressure on yourself.” Ben rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. Sitting on the foot of their bed, he looked her up and down. “It doesn’t always have to be about… _trying_. Sometimes I just want to make love to you for no reason.” He huffed a little laugh, leaned back on his hands, and admired her bare legs. “Other than I love you.”

“Ben.” Rey looked like she was trying not to cry. She crossed the room and sat on the bed next to him, her knees jiggling nervously. Almost as quickly, he had her on her back on the mattress, leaning over her, braced on one arm. She looked almost nervous as she stared up at him, her pulse fluttering in the hollow at the base of her throat.

“We’ll keep trying.” Ben reassured her, smoothing his hand across her flat abdomen, and playing with the hem of the t-shirt she was wearing. When she tugged it up, he could tell she wasn’t wearing any underwear underneath it. He flashed her a grin. “It’s not like I _mind_ trying.”

Ducking his head, he kissed her mouth, then the corner of her lips, then her cheek, and then traversed down her neck, paying special attention to her ear.

“ _Ben_.”

“Mmm?” He sucked a little mark onto her collarbone, pushing the stretched neckline of the t-shirt to the side, his hand creeping under the fabric and between her thighs.

“Ben!” She slammed her legs together, keeping him out.

He huffed in exasperation, lifting his head and resting his fingers on her hip. “What?”

Rey propped herself up on her elbows. She didn’t look annoyed; rather, she looked as if she could barely lie still. Her voice was uneven. “I’m trying to tell you something.”

“What?” Ben repeated, his attention caught by the look on her face – a feat, considering she was half-naked and underneath him.

Her hand covered his, and pulled it from her hip-bone to her belly, flattening it across her torso and intertwining their fingers. “I’m pregnant.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is well and truly the end. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your support, suggustions, and hilarious commentary. I have had such a good time with you all. 
> 
> P.S. I am mulling a few ideas over for my next story - but, true to the collaborative nature of fan fiction, I would absolutely love to hear what you want to read. Let me know in the comments, and let me know what you thought of this story.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make me happy. Happy writers write more.


End file.
